


Truth

by thatoneguywiththatoneship



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions, Pocket Monsters: Black 2 & White 2 | Pokemon Black 2 & White 2 Versions
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anti-Hero, Bad Decisions, Bitterness, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Dark, Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, Ferrum, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hero Worship, Hurt/Comfort, Isshu-chihou | Unova, Loss of Identity, Loss of Innocence, M/M, Moral Bankruptcy, Moral Degeneration, Multi, Murder, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Slow Build, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatoneguywiththatoneship/pseuds/thatoneguywiththatoneship
Summary: There is no contract between man and god stating you need remain a 'hero' of truth.





	1. Ferrum

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the new project. I only hope it entertains you as much as the last.

* * *

**Prologue: Blood and Iron**

* * *

Black entered the ring.  
It was scrappy, corrugated iron slammed haphazardly into shape, built in secret below the slopes of Ferrum's Phos volcano.It was circular, the aforementioned iron walls hastily welded together to create a circle roughly fifteen metres across and four metres tall. Above those walls were bars that formed a mesh, a roof to let the dim and musky light in and a barrier so that any fighting Pokémon couldn't harm the audience. One of many dark, decrepit holes crafted for the entertainment of bloodthirsty degenerates in the region. Ferrum was a long shot from Unova, far from Sinnoh, in a remote corner of the planet where no truly important eyes looked.  
It was beneath the attention of the League, beneath the attention of civilisation in general outside of Neos city. Neos may have been a tourist location but everywhere else in Ferrum was the exact same - a bloodbath. Nobody ventured far from the region's core, for fear that the Ferrum League wouldn't protect them any longer.  
And Black was most certainly not being protected by anyone. He'd come here to die, to pay for the ultimate failure, allowing Plasma to take over Unova. Every second he spent here was another second in which Ghetsis and N fortified their castle and rallied their troops without a single worry, knowing the Hero was languishing in a pit far away from their sight.  
He had to escape. But first...  
A chain link fence clicked open on the other side of the arena and from it burst a full grown Garchomp. Black's heart sank. Ferrum's Pokémon were savage and heartless and he'd seen this Garchomp make mincemeat of past 'contestants.' The thing was on a leash at least, a heavy iron thing it strained against, displaying thick and banded cords of muscle in its neck.  
Whatever was holding it back seemed to vanish and the Pokémon lurched forward, nearly frothing at the mouth with bloodthirsty rage. It screeched a cry of challenge to Black and swept its scythes into the dirt threateningly, causing bursts of grit to explode into the air. The crowd cheered. This was exactly what they'd come to see - some upstart, some idiot, get gutted for thinking they could take on such a monster. Black was neither. Plasma had arranged for him to be placed here. The Shadow Triad, Ghetsis's favored lackeys, had ensured that Black wouldn't leave this place.  
He was not totally defenseless however. This was sport, not spectacle. If he didn't hold his own then the show would be over too fast, too boring for the spectators. To make things interesting, he'd been given two weapons before entering the ring. Two curved kukri knives. A pair of long and aged chains kept those knives bound to his arms at the wrist. He was not cuffed - there was no link holding his arms together, but there was an individual link around each arm. It was tied tight, tight enough for the chains to conduct his heartbeat, his pulse.  
The iron loops made Black feel the blood in his veins, the clockwork tick of his heart that told him that somehow he lived still. It came in pulsating hums that he could match the rhythm of, shrinking his world down to him and the points of the knives he wielded. There was not only fear in his body. Confidence lived there too, the belief that he could do this.  
Perhaps it was ancestral, this feeling of mastery, this skill. He didn't know whether or not he was descended from Ferrum, but he could feel a better grasp on this weapon setup than the impressions he got from many others who had been thrown into the fighting pit he now occupied. The tightness of his human body, the speed of his feet, the fire in his heart that fueled his burning need to get out of this hellhole and return to Unova, where he belonged, where he needed to be, where the real fight was, made him think that this might be more than chance. It was stirring in him.  
His feet kicked up dirt and sand as he dodged a swipe straight downward. It was fast, a light attack meant to catch him off his guard and split him from collarbone to pelvis, a wound grievous enough that the Garchomp could set on him and dig its teeth into his flesh, bite down on his body and rip him to bloody and meaty strings.  
But Black moved aside. His brown hair flowed in an almost picturesque sense, even though it was caked with filth, like his features which were locked in a snarl of his own. The Garchomp swept out again, and this was what Black had been expecting to follow - a heavier, slower strike meant to behead him and leave his corpse to fall, spurting crimson from his neck in a graceful arc. Black had moved before the blow was halfway to him. He ducked away, dropping into a roll to get behind the Pokémon, and it finally did something he didn't expect - swipe with its tail. The force nearly shattered his neck, but he caught it in the ribs instead - they would bruise but together had withstood the impact. Nothing broken, not yet.  
Stunned briefly, Black staggered. The Garchomp was on him in no time. He'd seen it before, seen someone he'd spoken to once in the cells slip up. He hadn't even known the man's name, only his face - the face that Black had seen this same Garchomp force a fin into, bursting an eyeball and making viscous, black blood cascade up the length of the fin, turning purple scales to deep and rich red.  
It stuck in his mind like a knife, like the fin that might puncture it if he didn't react. _'I'm not going to die like that,'_ he thought, and almost died like that. The Garchomp tried to pull the same trick and Black raised both his arms.  
He'd been given two weapons before entering the ring. Two curved kukri knives. Three weapons- no, four, if you counted the chain lengths that kept those knives bound to his arms at the wrist. He was not cuffed - there was no link holding his arms together, but there was an individual link around each arm. It was tied tight, tight enough for the chains to conduct his heartbeat, his pulse.  
The points of his knives contested the Garchomp's scythe. It struggled, but was stronger than Black by a great deal. The point came closer, centimetre by centimetre. Black's knives were hardly enough to resist the razor edge of the land shark's scythes, and began to skritch-skritch as they were chipped into, notches forming in the steel.  
"Arceus-" Black cursed through a tight throat and gritted teeth. The point was about two inches from his nose. His heartbeat was increased, hammering, faster perhaps than he'd ever felt it - the chains accentuating his pulse made it all the more pronounced. The Pokémon hissed and it made Black all the more enraged as slimy spit coated his face. He kept his teeth firmly gritted.  
He could hear the crowd laughing, jeering, and imagined the bastard Ghetsis cackling upon learning of Black's demise. That image was enough. The well of flame in his chest burst into crackling and glorious life, his rage exploding into a shove of adrenaline.  
His knives had just enough resistance, just barely enough, to push back without snapping. Arceus, that would have been miserable. Finding the strength to fight only to have your tools break at the last moment and fall back into the jaws of gory defeat. But the blades held. He shoved the scythe up and away, and before it came back down he put a slash into the Pokémon's red belly. The wound was not deep, but it was enough, enough to make the Garchomp flinch.  
Black launched himself backward as the beast recocked the blade to swing at him again - another heavy hit. All he had to do was dodge and-  
Suddenly he was bleeding. How had that happened? There was a gash in his waist six inches across and half an inch deep at the most cavernous point. Pain made itself known, stitching his body with little pieces of invisible glass that dug into his flesh.  
If that was a fast attack, this thing had been playing, and was tired now. It wanted to take the head of this prey. Black knew fear as a creeping cloud of mortality - doubts about his continued existence, a worry that he'd never crawl out of this hole. Never take on Ghetsis. Never know how it ended.  
Again, he thought, 'That's not going to happen.'  
The Garchomp had other ideas, launching itself toward him. Its fins were clipped and it couldn't move at the speed it maybe once could have. It was still blindingly fast, too fast at maximum speed for Black to evade. He tried - he tried with all he was, but found himself too human.  
This thing, it was too qui-  
He couldn't complete the thought, claws sinking into his plain black slave-shirt. It didn't want to puncture his chest. It wanted to make a show of him. With its muscly arms it lifted him overhead and threw him into the dirt of the arena floor.  
Stunned, Black knew this was the end. He was face down. His knives were chipped and there was dirt infecting his wounds. His body ached. He'd been too damn slow. His hands closed over the sand, grit, silt beneath his fingers.  
Wait.  
Seizing a fistful he spun his torso, ignoring the feeling of warm blood mingling with the mess below to see the land shark descending on him with scythes ready to-  
He tossed the mixture at the Pokémon, aiming for the sensitive eyes. Yellow irises expanded, the pupil shrinking as the Garchomp took an eyeful of mess. It roared as it landed and missed with both swipes, bringing its claws apart to roar its discomfort at Black's strategy. Not to be intimidated, Black threw more.  
Now the dragon froze in place, clawing at its own eyes in a frenzied scrabble, and Black knew this was his opportunity. An eye for an eye, after all.  
Forcing himself to stand quickly before it could recover, he turned his wrists so the knives chained to them pointed toward the Garchomp. Then, with an overarm swing, he plunged the left one into the eye of the dragon.  
The eyeball burst instantly. It felt intensely satisfying to see it splatter up the length of his knife, see the black sclera rupture and spray like ink up the length of his weapon the same way he'd seen the nameless man's head split open.  
"Fuck you," he spat in its screaming face. There was no way it could hear him over the sound of its own agony. "Fuck you." He swung his other wrist. The second eyeball didn't burst. It acquired a deep and ugly chasm across its diameter, strange juice leaking down the scaled face. It bit forward and almost ripped his nose off, but only managed to peel a strip of skin away. Black didn't flinch, didn't even blink.  
He pulled the left knife away from the creature's eyes and dug it deeper into the belly, feeling ribs, counting as it struck, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight rows of bone on the way down. Black thanked Arceus that it was not a Mega Garchomp and that its ribcage had not ossified. Blood leaked down his hand, lathering his fingers liberally.  
The right blade sunk into the shark-dragon's neck, through tough hide. The shark choked, huffing on wet air, slick with its blood, feeling the chasm in its chest spilling its life into the dirt below. The Pokémon was like the human. It didn't want to lose. It wanted to be the victor, it wanted to survive, wanted to escape this tortured existence where it ripped apart humans every day for a crowd that jeered and cheered and never ever stopped watching.  
The Garchomp wanted to return to its dark damp cave and foster its eggs. It was a want that would never be realised now. It wouldn't ever see its eggs. It wouldn't ever see the second knife plunge into its throat beside the first and wouldn't see the crimson pool that it and the human struggled in, their feet dragging up red splatters.  
Black, unaware of all this, felt no remorse.  
The dragon's death throes were pitiful and motivated not by a desire to ensure a pyrrhic victory but by a basic and understandable want to escape its assailant and die in peace, or as much peace as it could be offered with burst eyeballs and a rent chest, esophagus clogging with bloody mire.  
Black didn't stop stabbing. One-two, one-two, neck, neck, neck- it whimpered, arms hanging limp, and Black finally dragged the knives down and ripped its throat out in a stringy and gory mess that splattered at his feet.  
The Pokémon fell, and the crowd was silent.  
Black too fell but only to his knees, feeling the pain of the cut in his abdomen, but also more. A joy that came with victory. That was something he'd expected to feel. But... also a thirst. A desire he couldn't explain. Something that had been awakened inside him years ago, deep inside his heart, a king's legacy passed down the Unova region for hundreds of generations.  
And above all else, Black didn't want to feel it. He'd been desperate to escape it, tried to deny it his whole life, even when it mattered the most. He'd known what he was, and didn't want to be that - not one bit.  
Hilbert Touya Black, reluctant Hero of Truth, stood over the body of a dead Garchomp in a ramshackle arena flanked by iron bars with a silent crowd behind them. He slowly raised his chained arms in victory, knowing that he should not have survived.  
Still there was no applause. He was meant to have died, he had been put there against that opponent specifically to die gloriously - and he'd come out on top. Black wandered to the nearest wall and put his back to it, hand over his wound as he bent his knees and slid down the rusty and rough surface to sit up against it.  
He could feel the corrugated iron against his back, the texture synonymous with the Ferrum region - iron like the chains around his wrist, like the bars that protected the spectators. Iron like his will. Black's wound stung, but he wouldn't pass out from it. He just had to wait now - for either another opponent to finish him, or for freedom.  
He wished he had something, someone to numb the pain. But he was on his own in Ferrum. Nobody else who cared about him knew he was alive, and nobody was coming for him.  
He could live with that.  
What he couldn't live with was Ghetsis getting away with it all. He would crawl out of this tomb a charred and bloody pulp if it meant Ghetsis died. Black shut his eyes and sighed. He could only imagine what was going on back home.  
_Home..._


	2. I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all I see it all

He thought of home as two of the ring's officials stepped in to collect him. He wondered what was next for him. Would they dispose of him right here and now? Let him go, ignoring Plasma's will? Hold him prisoner a while longer for such an impressive show? Each of them seemed possible, but it all depended on who the person in charge was, and how much of a shit they actually gave about Plasma or about him.   
His wound was flaring. That could be mortal if it had nicked anything at all significant, but it wasn't bleeding as rapidly as he may have imagined. It still stung though. It stung like a Beedrill, digging and then gouging, no mere stabbing pain. Something more complex in how it delivered agony. He ignored the intricacies of the pain and kept pushing down on the gash, careful to not drive one of the knives into it accidentally. Blood ran over his fingers and he watched them turn red with a mindless interest.  
Adrenaline was keeping him steady and when it started to die down he began to shake, his heart regulating him normally once again, the stinging only intensified in insistence. He might actually die to this single mistake. His mind started to convince him that would be the case, tricking his hands into feeling sluggish and limp. Where his brain failed him, the iron links he'd been provided didn't. Again it reminded him he lived, the thump of his heart in his wrist as the chain held back his pulse.   
That alone was enough to cling to. The steady 'tick' of time going by, like an invisible watch that reverberated with each passing second - only instead of counting seconds it measured the pauses between beats in his pulse. He calmed down. Black found enough stability to raise himself into a shaky stand again, back to the wall.  
"Put your arms behind your back and your forehead against the wall," one of the guards ordered him. Black obeyed, wary of their weapons. They carried submachine guns and knives of their own. They couldn't be too careful - Black knew some people came to these pits of their own accord. Those kinds of people must be unpredictable.   
He felt them roughly unwind the iron loops from his wrists, taking the twin kukri blades away and stowing them someplace he couldn't see before each grabbing an arm.   
"Can you walk?" The words were spoken without concern, without cadence or thought or any kind of understanding as to what the three words meant. Black guessed that the speaker wasn't fluent in Unovan.   
"Barely." Black grumbled.   
"Can you walk?" The repetition confirmed Black's suspicion. The person had been told to listen for one of two answers and respond to it. They didn't know what the question they'd asked him actually meant.  
"Yes."   
"Walk." They let him go.   
_'Fuck.'_  Black thought. He could've done with the support. One stepped in front of him and led the way while the other remained behind him. The trio moved around the dead dragon and the pool of blood steadily spreading from the wound Black had slashed, and toward the chainlink fence that the Garchomp had entered through.   
"Follow close." Black understood why as he saw down the corridor. It was almost pitch black, dingy, dark, but it was wide, and it had occupants. Occupants like the Garchomp. There was a dusk Lycanroc, slavering, spitting and hissing as they passed. He could see the figure of the exotic Alolan Pokémon from the red light its eyes cast. Others were mere silhouettes. A Drapion, clicking and chattering teeth, spitting poison. An Excadrill, all snapping drill-bit fingers and buzzing growls. Something tall, bipedal, lurking - Black couldn't tell what it was. The strangest presence was a Ninjask, but the more Black thought about it the more he considered the creature may be too fast to defeat in combat. A slow death of a thousand cuts against an enemy too quick to fight.   
He held his breath through the passage, despite the restraints on each Pokémon. This could be how they intended to eliminate him, now he'd killed their Garchomp. Stage a bit of a jailbreak. If he wouldn't die in the arena, he'd die nonetheless - but the further they got down the path and the more growls joined the chorus the more Black relaxed. His wrists itched. If he had his knives back, he'd take them all on, even with the-  
His wound spat on his delusions of grandeur and he staggered. A hand fastened around his waist, the guard behind him helping him walk straight. Black wanted to acknowledge the support but kept his eyes forward and focused on the end of the passage.   
Finally they emerged from the corrugated corridor and into a much sleeker area, where everything was a little straighter and less patchwork. Where less rusted iron stuck out in jagged teeth and where the ground felt a little more welcoming, with less angular bite. To Black, this changed nothing. They could just as easily execute him here.   
After being led a little further another figure approached him. They weren't wearing a suit, but he knew just from a glance that the person approaching was the owner of the ring, or the guy who ran it. Slicked hair, well-groomed when everyone else he'd seen had cracked and split wrinkles, lacking any flair or show like this man displayed. Black wasn't immune to this - his hair was unwashed and matted, his skin was flaking and he was wearing scratchy and short stubble.  
Black took a breath of the chemical air of Phos volcano and kept walking, a staggered stride. "Hey there, kid," the boss greeted. "Saw you do a fine job in there." The man sounded completely disinterested, as if he was speaking to dirt stuck under his nails as he scraped it out. The guard in front of Black stepped aside to allow the man to address Black directly.  
"You gonna kill me, then?" Black questioned, equally passive. He didn't have a chance without weapons and three targets around him, so he had to accept defeat if that was his immediate future.   
"No, course not," the boss was chewing on something, hands in their pockets. "Why would I?"  
**_'Truth.'_**  
Black saw it cascade from his lips, saw it pour from his nostrils and saw the tone betray the intent. Truth. The man wasn't lying.   
"You're not pissed I killed your Garchomp?" Black exercised as much caution as he could while still daring a little bite to enter his voice again, a sign of resilience. He refused to believe that he'd get off totally free.  
"Far from it, kid." Again, Black saw the truth in the statement. "The crowd may not have seen what they were expecting, but it did me just fine. The next time, they'll all bet on you."  
"So next time you try harder to kill me?" Black took that logic to its next point, filling in the next gap on the conversation plan. It seemed pretty clear.   
The ringleader grinned, showing white and straight teeth. "Seems an awful lot more possible." This time the man had accidentally dodged Black's... he called it his lie detector, because that's what it was. The only way it could be avoided was with a vague answer and even then sometimes his lie detector would extrapolate the facts from it.  
"And what happens if I win the next time?" Black questioned. He hoped the answer was 'freedom'. The man seemed reasonable enough.   
"I'll kill you myself."   
**_'Truth.'_  **  
Forget that then.   
Finally the jovial tone of voice had dropped off. The fighting pit was for gangsters, for creeps, and this guy was willing to see total strangers die for the business of those people. Reasonable was merely an impression he gave off - it was far from the truth, now that Black was focusing he could smell out the lies and see the aura of falseness. It was almost impressive to Black, how it had taken him this long to cotton on. Something about it made him smirk. "What are you smiling at?"  
"Nothing," Black shrugged. "I mean, I'm dead."   
"That's the spirit."   
In a way it was. Continued survival would be a pleasant surprise. Until then he had to live one second at a time, especially with - he had thought about it and it had hurt - the cut in his torso. He pressed his shirt into it and felt wet blood soak into the black fabric, imagining a awful squelch as he did so even though no sound was made. He huffed in pain and the ringleader seemed to notice.  
"Hm. Get him well enough to fight again."  
Black had expected it, but still couldn't help but grimace. How soon would the next battle come? Were they going to quickly seal up that wound and then chuck him back to the ring without much chance to catch his breath? Would it be weeks of dread and delay?   
He was encouraged to move again by the guard behind him, moving him along the passage and further into whatever complex this place was. How much effort had it taken to bury all this under the cliffside of the volcano? How much time and effort away from prying eyes had gone into shoving these flat steel plates into the tunnels and creating pathways for spectators and gladiators? Now wasn't the time to question it.   
They guided him further until they reached a room with a 'unique' smell - thick, rich copper, the kind of taste that made his tongue fizz, like salt and vinegar. While saying the room was bloody would be a huge overstatement, Black knew from the few dried marks that this was where many wounded had been brought to when they'd somehow survived their first brawl.  
"Where's the cut?" Again, no subtlety from the guard. Just words that they'd been trained to speak.   
Black pointed to his torso.   
"Shirt up." Black lifted it and exposed the crimson lake that was spilling onto the loose trousers he was wearing, bracing himself for the worst. The guard made a quick glance to assess the damage and turned - the one behind him kept a close eye on his movements while the first rooted through a small white container. They extracted a red spray bottle and Black's heart sank. Potions weren't for use on humans, he'd take anything over that: he'd heard about the painful burning that could last for days, the sting, the tang of the spray that lingered. He'd never tried it just for how horrible it sounded. Plasters did for the cuts and bruises he'd sustained on his journey. The guard twisted the nozzle to engage the bottle, then pulled back on the handle - the scarlet liquid struck his skin.   
It was like a bath bomb dissolving, but the smell of the cosmetic was now a feeling and the appearance a sensation, neither pleasant. Black hissed like the super potion did as it mended his skin. He'd describe the way it did so as 'acidic' or 'forcibly', as it felt like it was stretching his body out to repair him. Arceus, he hoped this wasn't the case for Pokémon. He had known some trainers who refused to use Potions, sticking to the gel baths in Pokémon Centres for rejuvenating their teams.   
"Back to cell." Now Black was certain he'd heard all the Unovan that this person could speak.   
"Which way?"  
  
Black felt the cut acutely. It stung like hell, but it meant his organs were staying inside him where they belonged and that was all he could ask for.   
He was sat up against a wall in his cell, and had ignored all the whispers and quiet applause of fellow prisoners, just slumping there and waiting for whenever his second battle arrived. This was defeatist, he thought after a few minutes of inactivity. He couldn't just sit, he had to be active and seek out his future rather than let it come to him. The last time he let it come to him he'd had his world dismantled, piece by piece. Now it was him on the line, his being that would likely be hacked to little gory bits if he didn't make a choice.  
He forced himself to stand again, heaving in pain as he did, one hand on the wall. A shout of agony escaped him and he sucked at the air as if to reclaim it and to steel himself for standing without support. He gradually pushed off of the cold steel surface and stood on his own two feet, feeling the gash spark and sputter in protest.   
"Hgh-" he exclaimed, but again bit the escaping vocalisation back as if embarrassed by his humanity, his understandable reactions to his wound. He had to remain sharp. It hadn't been his blades that had saved him, it was his mind, thinking quickly enough to throw the sand into the dragon's eyes. If he could keep that speed and the feeling of control he'd had over his body he still had a chance, but it was being drained by all the sensations he was experiencing at once - sickness, fear, pain - he drew them all back and tried to suppress each one in turn. He had to or he'd freak out and certainly lose his life. Physical action would distract him.   
There was a tortured scrap of metal loose on the ceiling. Black reached up with both hands and hooked his fingers over it, sucking in air before doing a pull-up on the twisted iron. His stomach angrily screamed at him in a voice that was pure pain, telling him to stop and relax, to take his time and heal.   
He ignored it and did another. His whole body trembled and the ceiling creaked: it croaked words of dissent to him. Again Black was deaf to the sensible idea of lying back and being satisfied. He had to be stronger. He couldn't waste a second.  
On the third his body decided enough was enough. His fingers slipped and he fell down, almost no distance, but enough to make him stumble when he landed, in turn making him stagger at the pain in his torso, then making that worse when he reflexively put his hand to the scar. He fell back against the cell wall with a thump and collapsed, sitting.   
Black let his head rest against the wall. Maybe he would die here. Maybe the Garchomp had already killed him with that blow, that one stroke of the scythe it had successfully connected. It would just take time to eat away at him, to strip him of his energy and his resistance until he accepted death - or maybe he'd accidentally rip the gash open again in his next fight and the dragon would have its posthumous revenge in moments.  
Black gritted his teeth. He put his hands on the dirt beside him and pushed up, back to a crouch, back to a stand. It didn't last long - he had to rest against the wall to support himself. It felt like there was a javelin stuck in his midsection that wiggled and encumbered him further every time he shifted.   
His hands raised up, but now he relented to realism. He couldn't do any more. He had to give up for now and take time to-  
He'd started doing the pull-ups again. His entire being resisted his commands to do so, but Black was far away from the needs of his own body, removed from it al-  
He slipped again and this time he fell straight down, his legs gave way as he landed and he lay on his side in the dirt.   
_"Guh."_  It was the sound of resignation finally being heard. Black exhaled and saw fragments of grit and sand blast away from the force of his breath, like the swirling desert of Route Four. He shut his eyes and imagined it, thought about being there. He'd give himself a moment of rest to regroup and rejuvenate for the next fight. Better that than making himself any weaker.   
He was defeated. That one duel had taken too much out of him. He was so desperate to make it out but reality was staring him in the face and the future did not look bright.   
He would never have dreamed of fighting a Pokémon one on one. The creatures that surrounded them were too powerful and too majestic to challenge without a proper weapon or some kind of terrain advantage - especially the highest tier threats, like the Garchomp he'd somehow eviscerated. While on his journey he'd been in a group of four, with their own Pokémon to protect them, and they'd still come into scrapes that they thought they wouldn't make it out of.   
Black rolled onto his back. He watched the ceiling as if there was something to see there, knowing by now that there wasn't. He wished that he could reflect, but he'd blocked himself from doing so, laying down ground rules: he couldn't distract himself. Thinking about what got him here would-  
His fingers lay over the tall scar on his face. He'd forgotten it was there, and held back the memory of how it had got there desperately. More recollections collectively clamored at his skull and he fought every one of them back. It just wasn't the time.  
He dragged up a thin and patchwork blanket from the corner of his cell, maybe only a metre long and half as wide, took his boots off, rested his head on his arm and tried to sleep.   
His internal clock was screwed out of proportion. He could have been there for any length of time, any at all. He was always hungry, so he couldn't judge it on the meager meals, and he was always tired, so he couldn't judge it on sleep. The ring had displayed no signs of the outside world's continued existence bar the spectators.  
Now that he'd accepted that he shouldn't exert himself, he zeroed in on rest instead. He went to sigh, inhaled too hard and introduced a gust of dust and dirt into his system - he choked and coughed it up again, sitting up straight, before sitting up against the wall to sleep.   
He was exhausted, sad, defeated, and weak. Black slept a dreamless and fitful nap.  
  
He was woken from a vague and watercolour dream by a clanking of iron on iron, a repetitive strike like a bell - his eyes shot open and saw a new guard, smirk on his face, slamming what looked like a crude metal nightstick on the bars.   
"Time already?" Black asked dryly. He could still feel that cut, perhaps even more. He wasn't going to check, but it was probably infected. He'd worry about that if he found the time, which was certainly not now.   
"Yep. They're eager to see you go at it again."  
_**'Truth.'**_  
"How long's it been?"   
"Can't tell you that. Get up now."   
Black considered. He had a chance to disarm this guard and break out right now - but as he stood he saw the shadow of another, stood just out of sight. Clever. If he'd been too brash and acted immediately, then he'd have been executed.   
"Excited for the show?" This was a speaker more versed in Unovan. Certainly could've fooled Black.  
"Apprehensive," Black muttered as he was led back out, the hidden guard following after him. More whispers from the cells, encouragement, solemn farewells. The guard who had spoken, with the steel implement, crashed it against the wall threateningly, shaking loose a cascade of grey ash from the ceiling. Black flinched at the sound, but nobody saw his reaction.   
His heart was in his throat again. He'd been scared the first time he'd entered but now he was terrified. He had to get to somewhere where the worry wouldn't get to him, where he could tranquilize the blood boiling and bubbling in his body, his every muscle ready to lash out at the slightest provocation.  
The last time he'd been sent to fight for entertainment, but now he was being sent specifically to die for a couple more dollars in the pocket of the ringleader. He was slipping into a bad mindset, and was aware of it. He couldn't go into a fight against another Pokémon like this - he focused on remaining calm. Black couldn't give them a reason to put him down. The journey continued through the rusty and dark death row, until Black recognised the fence gate. This was his stop.  
"Stick your arm out."   
They tied on the first knife just as tight as it was before. Black's heartbeat settled as he felt it in his arm. The fingers of his left hand flexed. The right soon joined it as the second chain snaked over it, knife attached to his wrist. Black didn't smile, but he did feel like he had a chance again. There was a rising feeling counteracting the steady sinking he'd been feeling. He closed his eyes and sighed.  
"Best of luck."   
Back into the ring.   
The terrain was still totally flat, dirty - a dark brown patch of dried Garchomp blood resided slightly left of the center as Black entered. There was a larger audience present, but they were all the more engaged, here to see the guy that murdered a Garchomp - either having heard about his escapade through word of mouth or by seeing it firsthand. Either way, they were here for the exciting and thrilling sequel. He'd drawn a crowd. Great. No pressure.   
The gate on the other side to Black opened and something was let off its chain. Black closed his fists and tightened his muscles in preparation, feeling the blades as extensions of himself - then he saw the Pokémon he'd be fighting. The new opponent was his equivalent. Bipedal, weapons mounted on each wrist, but faster, stronger, dirtier.   
A Bisharp. A Pokémon held in high regard around Ferrum's pits, a patron saint of blood sport in organised underground crime. The way it hunted without changing its expression, leading its pack of Pawniard and ferociously setting upon prey with wrist-blades of its own, made it a predator that inspired the Ferrite gangsters to create these games where people and Pokémon were hunted for entertainment, not to mention Black's method of defence.   
It was this Pokémon's silhouette he'd seen earlier, and he had been right to be unsettled by it. He was playing an imitator to this thing, and that was why they'd picked that particular opponent - it should have the natural skill to kill him and beat aside any attempts to stop it. It had evolved to be this way - he'd only been copying it with his crude tools. The creature did not have individual digits, its fingers fused and formed into shovel-like appendages, but ready to split apart back into individual fingers when the battle was said and done. The most unnerving thing about it for Black was the number of scrapes in it. Not gashes or huge rent blows through the steel of its body, but mere scrapes, the kind found on old cars in scrapyards, the kind of thin silver shines that wound around it more as heraldry more than symbols of battles lost. There were no deep cuts, and no surface damage. No previous fighter had ever made this thing feel pain.  
One step at a time, they approached each other. This wasn't the Garchomp, this was something slower and more methodical. The Garchomp had launched itself into the arena with its scythes swinging, roaring, flailing. This Pokémon was a warrior, a battler, not a snapping and growling mess of muscle and blade. Its expression was locked into a mask of contempt, head dipped.  
Black didn't blink, but knew he wouldn't have the same kind of composure that this monster did. He only had his experience from his journey, none of which went any distance toward answering the question _'how do I win a one-on-one fight with a Pokémon that hunts down Bouffalant herds alone.'_  The two stopped with about three metres of distance between them, and the crowd fell silent. Black angled one arm horizontally to block, while keeping the other arm ready to strike back. The Pokémon took another pace forward, in a pose Black recognised as a type of fencing guard, obviously more practiced than his own. Black finally smiled again. It was coming back. The fire and the adrenaline and the danger. He didn't like to be in this position but he had no choice but to win, and that was exciting for the time being.   
The buildup was slow, circling, a gradual buildup, closing distance in inches rather than bounds. The Bisharp drew back one arm and went to strike - Black ducked and it swept low instead, faking him out. He stepped back from a swipe of a cloven metal foot intended to knock him off his feet. His movement scraped along the dry dust hole and left the first mark of their duel on the arena.  
It didn't slow, now going for a series of quick jabs. Black sidestepped them in turn, eventually being forced to drop and roll. A hot bite exploded from his torso as his scar screeched and he barely made it up to one shaky knee in time to block another strike, this one a vicious sideways lunge that would have been used to cleave through his skin and into his guts. He finally retaliated, and it elbowed him with a tough no-nonsense strike and swept out again. That swipe was fended off by a hasty and improvised block, both of Black's arms rising to deflect the blade. He couldn't get a hit in. He was too far on the back foot and this Bisharp was too fast to outpace. He had to slow things down. Consider a new strategy.   
He scrambled away, wary of being forced into a corner, ignoring the crowd's jeers. After gaining a little distance he came back at the Bisharp, refusing to allow it to pressure him back. If he missed a critical movement and was torn apart, then let him die - he simply could not risk being backed up too far. He had to make every correct parry and never slip while trying to work out how to retaliate.   
With every attempt the Bisharp made Black would note the move, keeping escape routes open, carefully thinking about positioning and how to avoid each strike. He cataloged every swipe, where, when and why his opponent had used it, and how to respond to each attack in turn. This would not be a firework of violence like the last battle, but a flame - rising, flickering, spitting and lasting until the fuel was gone, either him or the Bisharp.   
With every step either combatant took more furrows were dug into the arena floor, the history of the battle being painted into dirt and pebbles. With every swing the crowd kept their breath bated. It was a full eight minutes in when Black finally successfully retaliated after so long of evasion, countering and analysis. The Bisharp had done the same lunge twice, trying to catch him off guard, but the opposite happened. Black noted the first, predicted the Pokémon to attempt the second and sidestepped, lashing out while the Dark and Steel type was unable to defend itself. One of his knives ground over the Pokémon's metal face, leaving another infinitesimal grey scrape in the surface. Nearly nothing. No damage, no feedback, no victory. Steel on steel. He wasn't doing any damage that way.  
This would be a war of attrition. He couldn't kill it. Its body was too tough to cut, and there was no easy out - throwing the sand at it was likely to only make it unpredictable rather than do any damage. He had to fight until it was worn out, and that could be hours. Hours of this delicate and deadly dance.  
But that was the singular way to win.   
The carefully choreographed clash continued, one step at a time. Bisharp knew what Black was doing, and was frustrated by it. It was already too late for the Pokémon to go for an all-out flurry of slashes, as Black would have a chance to parry each one. It could only try to duke him out, trick him, and several times it thought it had only to have the human dodge and feel one of Black's blades scrape against it in retaliation.   
The battle dragged. Spectators left. Returned. Neither Black nor the Bisharp paid them mind, not even when they chanted things that the combatants didn't bother interpreting. The world was the ring, and that was all. Everything else just fell off, steps, swipes, slashes, swings, slides, stabs, whatever came to mind.   
It took a while, but it began to work. It took a  _long while,_ Black beginning to not just feel tiredness in his muscle but also his eyes. He was glad he hadn't done so many pull-ups now. He'd saved his strength for this critical juncture. He didn't once think about how tired his legs felt or how heavy his arms were or the slight tickle - like blood - coming from his stomach where the Garchomp forced him to remember it.   
Who knew how long it all took. Black slowed down, but so did the Pokémon, becoming sluggish and desperate. They were reaching their last stands at the same time.  
Finally Black wobbled while parrying, at the end of his strength. The Bisharp, similarly spent, gathered the last energy it had and launched itself forward and tackled him down. Black's hands managed to keep its hands off his throat as it unsheathed its fingers to choke him. He rolled with it, slamming its head into the ground. Dazed, it tried to get a lucky hit, flailing - Black parried its attempts, but as the very last one came his arm seemed to fail and it dropped back to his side.   
_Clunk.  
_ He caught the metal forearm in his temple and saw stars. Black fell sideways off of the Pokémon and onto the arena floor. He exhaled slowly and tried to stand again, audibly and loudly groaning as he did. The Bisharp had made it back up beside him, and they stared at one another. The Bisharp's expression changed subtly. He remembered something from his Pokédex - a Bisharp would wear a poker face until they had killed their prey. The hunt was at an end. They sat.  
The Pokémon had relented. It saw him as a worthy opponent. He nodded his respect back. Understanding passed through the two fighters. Neither was happy with the current arrangement. "You wanna just..." he began, the words sewn into his breath, "...just get outta here?" It tilted its head to one side. It probably didn't understand. The crowd had mostly dispersed, muttering, nattering, but a select few had stayed the whole time, their eyes finally raised from phones, watches or other such distractions to watch the end. Slowly they began to notice that nothing more was going to happen. Black and the Bisharp were just sat there, and despite slowly feeling their strength return neither really wanted to make a move. There was an unspoken truce  
The crowd booed and hissed, some of them complaining in harsh voices with words that Black and the Pokémon didn't care to hear. Black leaned over and dug the Unovan flag into the arena floor with his left knife idly. The Bisharp watched silently. They just sat and relaxed until the clink of the fences caught their attentions and two guards marched - not walked, marched in with their weapons ready. _'Ah,'_ Black thought. _'Here it comes.'_  
"'Sup," Black asked brashly.   
"Shut the fuck up, kid." The ringleader was striding alongside one of them. "You're done."  
**_'Lie.'_**    
"You could make more money if you tried harder to kill me next time," Black suggested. His lie detector gave him much more confidence. That, and his answer was absolutely fact, if the man in charge could deal with the shame of this outcome.  
"Be fuckin' quiet. You-" the ringleader pointed at the Bisharp, "-you get up. Final dispensation. Pathetic performance." One of the guards readied a type of taser used to paralyze Pokémon to suppress the Sword Blade Pokémon as he spoke. He gestured to the scrappy circle around them. "I build this place to make it fair-"  
_**'Lie.'**_  
"-to not be like all the others," Black noticed the guard holding the taser yawning. Maybe this speech was common. "-where they rig it-"  
_**'Lie.'**_  
"-where they rip off the spectators-  
**_'Lie.'_**  
"- I do it for the people-"  
_**'Lie.'**  
_ "I get it," Black murmured, almost inaudible, speaking more to his lie detector than the boss.  
-and what do I get in return? Some dumb kid who thinks he's hot shit coming in and taking out my favorite combatant and losing me thousands of-"  
Black hadn't been looking at them, staring at the flag, and he didn't know why the guy had stopped talking until he heard the cries of the remaining audience, looked up and saw the blood running out of the ringleader's neck. The Bisharp had cut the throats of all three arena officials in one night slash, and Black was suddenly faced with the revelation that he hadn't forced the stalemate because he was good - he'd only survived because the Bisharp had wanted to fight him on fair ground. He stared at it from where he remained sat on the dirt, wondering if it would finish the job now that he knew. It had been using him for freedom-   
It stepped a cloven foot forward and extended its arm to help him up. The ring officials were forgotten already as they choked on their remaining scarlet life. Black only hesitated for a second, to raise his eyebrows in an expression even he wasn't sure of. He didn't quite understand what he'd be communicating but the Bisharp clearly did: it nearly smiled, and took his raised hand to pick Black up.   
Black nodded in respect, and the Bisharp returned the gesture. The human glanced up to the remaining spectators. "You people might want to... go. We're leaving now," Black called. He had more things to set to, though, and ignored the panic that spread through the crowd to start to rooting through the guard's pockets, looking for cash, cards, anything he could use to make a journey back to Unova or to eke out more from Ferrum. He extracted three wallets and didn't care to open them, satisfied with the weight of each one alone. He paused and then looked for keys to the makeshift cells, finding them in short order while his newfound friend just watched, arms folded.   
His ex-opponent didn't seem to care, the Dark and Steel-type folding its arms and turning a blind eye. Of course as a Dark type the Bisharp was not above dirty tactics of its own, and Black was again reminded that if it had wanted him dead he already would be. He didn't feel safe trusting it, but he felt that there was an air of respect between them, enough to where there was no animosity.   
"I know the other people stuck here shouldn't, but the Pokémon won't kill me when I let 'em go, right?"   
Bisharp shrugged.  
"That's reassuring."  
That hadn't been so hard. Just a little tiring.  
**_'Truth.'_  **  
"Thanks, Reshiram."


	3. Outro

Black hadn't really felt anything like a hero as he'd let everyone and everything go from the cells. He should have felt like he'd done something amazing, rose above, beat the odds, but he really just felt tired. His body was spluttering and shaking, making him stagger forward as he walked. He held out a hand flat in front of him and it shook badly. He noticed a tendency in his middle finger to twitch worse than the others.   
He'd tossed a couple of hundred Pokédollars each prisoner's way, not bothering to divide the stack he created from the wallets up properly and simply guessing based on thickness and the denomination of each bill. That was still kind of fair, right? He could've just given them nothing, he reasoned.  
"Wh-what's going on?" It was only a voice that asked him, not a face, not even a person - just a voice with no soul attached, no individuality that Black could perceive in his addled and ghostly state. Regardless of Black being unable to recognise anything but the question, he answered honestly.   
"You're free to go." His lips barely moved as he said it. He didn't know what was happening to him, but his head felt light and his eyes drowsy.   
"But- why?"  
"Because the guy holding you here just got his throat cut out." Their face began to swim into view finally - they looked Ferrite. Black wondered why the people who ran the ring would take innocents from their own region and make them fight - this side of Ferrum was clearly a place where it was every man for himself. "Why are you questioning me anyway?" Black was drawn back into the waking dream state halfway into the sentence, and shoved some dollars into the hand of the figure as if bribing them for silence. "Go."   
They obeyed quickly, probably as stunned by his response as he was by his situation. Not one of the people he'd freed had taken a look back - they'd all just filtered down the corridor, some of them thanking him - one hugged him but he didn't quite feel it, and indeed he'd tried to pry them away for fear they'd rip his wound open again. Black was left alone in the middle of the corridor, chains still on his arms and bars to his left and right. He gave a last look around and went to leave - a mental note to bring hellfire to this place once he had control of Reshiram scribbled into his mind.  
He could imagine it, liquid flame crashing and bubbling through the hot and rusty air he was surrounded by, and it made him smile knowing the world would be better off without it. If he had his dragon by his side, he could change all of this with a snap of his fingers - less than that, a look - less than that, a thought. Just think it and the light of a move spoken of in legend would crash into this place, a flare like a star, nuclear fusion: the annihilation of all matter in the blast would be instantaneous and irresistible.  
Black realised he was grinning and wiped it off his face. He wouldn't destroy like that. The power he could wield was terrifying, and he'd hid from Reshiram as long as he could just so that he couldn't misuse whatever it offered. That inaction had put him here. He wouldn't make that mistake again, but he wouldn't abuse it either.   
He stuck his hands in his pockets and instantly cut them apart with the knives tied to him by accident, barely registering his mistake before he cut into the flesh of his legs and stopping the motion just in time. He couldn't even be trusted with the small power he had, he mused. Or rather, he wasn't paying any mind to it - which made it all the more dangerous. This was just steel he was playing with now. If he found Reshiram he'd be playing with fire, quite literally - as he'd imagined, a fire greater and more destructive than any he had ever seen.  
Black had been lost in thought and only now began to move, leaving the corridor. He stuck out one arm and grinded a harsh and screeching gash into the wall, the knife hissing in protest as he pulled it through metal and plastic and stone, whatever the people who built the place saw fit to use. The long and ragged scar it left behind would be his promise to return and scour it all.   
He passed through the ring in the opposite direction now, into the Pokémon section - every steel bind was cut through, every one of the creatures freed by the Bisharp. It had freed the Pokémon with its wrist blades while he'd gone to free the people. Best that they kept apart, given the Pokémon mistreatment the ring had probably encouraged. Black wondered why the Bisharp hadn't left earlier if it could have cut through the steel then considered both that the guards had been ready to paralyze it and that the Sword Blade Pokémon was combative by nature - maybe it was like one of the nutcases who came to this place voluntarily. Professors had always insisted Pokémon had the same level of intelligence as humans, but Black hadn't considered that also meant they may have equal levels of insanity.  
He followed the pathway he had been shown earlier, drifting like a specter without purpose despite having a clear and explicit goal. Back to Unova. That was step one. The money he'd stolen would probably cover that step just fine. He didn't know the way out, but he found it on instinct. He moved wherever the air looked clean and not thick with ashen granules of suspended dust, finding his way out without a single wrong turn.   
The entrance was built into one of those steel containers, the long ones. He didn't know what they were called. The kind on boats, the big ones, shipping containers, maybe?  
A voice nagged that Black had bigger things to worry about but he was still in that odd state, where his priorities were inverted. He was almost bewildered as he emerged into bright midday sunlight, not seeing things as they were. Whether it was the heat haze blurring everything or something else, some other gift the Hero had that Black hadn't mastered, he couldn't be sure, but he was certain that things hadn't always looked like this.  
There were three or four layers to every object, to the Bisharp on his-  
Oh.  
His opponent had waited for him.  
Indeed, everything and everyone had waited for him for some reason - the people he'd freed, the Ninjask he'd been so concerned over being made to fight, the Lycanroc - everything.   
"Why are you still here?" Black asked them, genuine in his confusion. He opened his arms as if to indicate the mountainside, which was gradually becoming clearer. It was a blasted gray, a stained and messy pathway down into an empty plain, devoid of anything at all, even Cacturne. In the distance, far away, beckoned the city Black knew to be called Neos, tall buildings like blades.   
"We- we wanted to thank you."   
Black squinted. His eyes had always been sensitive to the light. "Alright," he said. He scratched the stubble that he'd grown while imprisoned. Maybe he'd grow a beard.   
"Um- do you- I mean-"  
He shrugged. "I'm going to Neos city." He cut off the speaker before they could ask something ridiculous. Even the Pokémon were staring at him expectantly. The Bisharp may have told them about the duel. Did they know on some instinctual level that he had a connection to Reshiram?  
"How can we repay you?" He was getting a little annoyed with all this. He'd freed them, he just wanted them to go. He'd done the good thing, the good deed. He didn't understand why they were hanging around, he'd given them money and set them free. At the same time though he understood why they had stayed. They felt indebted, and he felt tired and didn't want to deal with it. He brushed hair out of his eyes and blinked, trying to adjust his vision somehow. It wasn't working.  
"Go." He didn't mean to be harsh, he just wanted them to be gone so he could wander to Neos alone. He had to think: he had to reflect to get out of this strange headspace. "I don't have anything else to say. Just be careful you don't end up in another place like this."   
"Are you going to take all these places down?" Black again tried to blink away the daylight but it staunchly refused to stop bothering him. He had one eye screwed shut and the other was a narrow slit. He probably looked antagonistic.   
"Maybe," he replied nonchalantly. They didn't know he was the Hero, but how could they? He humoured them by saying it, but trying to remain calm was becoming difficult. One boot grinded back and forth in the greyscale sand of the hillside, scuffing furrows into it. The knives were still tied to him tightly, and he was starting to think very nasty things. Reshiram burning through the sky like a meteor and burning the sand where they stood, turning it to glass- "Right, I'm going."   
"We're all going to Neos City, though," a man who looked to be almost his age said. "Where else would we go?"   
"Come on, then," Black sighed, giving up. He took a few steps down the hill, the crowd parting to give him space. He didn't want to vocalize his frustrations, so he chose to remain aloof.   
The Pokémon began to follow him too. He glanced over his shoulder after a few steps to see the crowd massing behind him. He began to see individuals finally. There were five people and eight Pokémon. All the spectators must have taken some kind of shuttle or secret passage up the volcano and to an actual legal Pokémon arena above to avoid running into the pissed-off gladiators, and Black couldn't care less about chasing them down.   
He wanted to question the posse following him as to how they'd all got into the same situation, but remained tight-lipped. He hoped they didn't talk too much, so to instigate conversation seemed wrong. He wouldn't be able to follow it anyway.   
The vista was like a painting, the kind that would never hang in a formal museum, the kind you saw at an exhibition somewhere like Castelia Gallery - the impressionist look, an empty sky beaming blue and the ground below a hideous and dead grey. Nothing could grow on the slope they descended, coated in smothering, thick ashes from whenever the last eruption was. The sky and the sand were opponents, but in the distance Neos city looked to conjoin them, reaching up with buildings that tickled and teased the azure above. It wasn't like Castelia, where the buildings stabbed into the sky like swords and cleaved apart the divide between it and the land.   
Black could hear the crowd speaking. Maybe he should learn their names. Their faces. He still hadn't really seen a face since he'd won. As that thought passed through him so too did a lump of iron tiredness, settling in the soles of his feet, weighing him down and making him drag tracks suddenly. He coughed and pressed on, trying to put the exhaustion out of his mind again, go back to seconds earlier where he hadn't even noticed it - but it was here to stay now, laughing at his attempts with increasingly irritating stabs at his muscles. His left shoulder ached first, then his ankles, then his thighs.   
The stabs forced him to point his attention elsewhere, right back to the cords keeping his weapons on his wrists. He could feel his pulse again, now slower, gentler but still strong. He mused over the Ferrite tradition. If it made everyone else feel the same, then it was quite remarkable. He didn't think it in those words, but he knew the sensation it had given him and still did give him was unique.   
_'Reshiram?'_ he thought, but the dragon remained silent. Following the vacuum where he had expected a reply, he inwardly promised himself, _'Soon.'_   
Soon he'd speak to his... his patron? His partner? His... he didn't know what Reshiram was nor what it would want to be called. He wanted absolutely no part in whatever plan it had for him and was wondering if he could convince it to fob off the title of Hero to someone more heroic than himself, someone who would actually know what to do with his strange 'talent', the lie detector. It would be difficult to work out a use for it now that he'd fought his way out of that hole.   
The ragtag group continued down the plain, travelling with minor small talk being exchanged. Sometimes Black's lie detector would perk up, but only to tell him the honesty of his company out of context - he wasn't fully listening to the conversations taking place. Soon his shirt stuck to his back and his fringe stuck to his forehead, his eyes still wrinkled slits under the sun's relentless glow.  
The trek stopped early for some of the Pokémon travellers. The Bisharp was the first to depart, increasing its pace to catch up to Black before indicating that it wouldn't be going to the city. Black had understood and nodded, and then the Pokémon left the group. Black had not watched it leave, and had only cast a look over his shoulder once to see a watery silhouette of the creature that had spared him through the heat haze. Other Pokémon saw distant - very distant - woodlands and decided to make their way there instead. Pokémon were hardy, much more so than humans, and could usually make do with less sustenance. Black didn't worry for them, and did not cast a second thought to the Bisharp.  
Other life signs began to appear on the path. The Cacturne and Maractus Black had expected to see, one species malevolent, one jolly. Lotad hanging out around muddier areas - Black nearly slipped up in some of it, but kept his footing. Only one cloud was present in the sky, a gloomy grey tuft whose shadow seemed to never arrive and which seemed to be pasted down into the blue: it never moved, only present to passively observe the travelers from an unreachable point in the sky it was anchored to.   
Finally they reached the furthest outskirts of the city, where the sand and rock ended and blades of discoloured grass began to grow. Black couldn't form coherent thoughts anymore. He had to think for a while - about two minutes - before coming to the conclusion he had to be rid of his weapons before they got into the city. He unwound the first, removing the clip that held it tight, and pulled out the blade, sticking it into the grass, then mirrored the move with the other, crossing them like swords and laying both chains over them.   
A little marker, a small memorial. Nothing important, no message, a hunter could stumble upon them and take them for future use and Black wouldn't mind a great deal. He had no intention to collect them again.   
The rest of the group finally caught up to him while he disposed of the tools, and stood over him as he finished. Black knew what that meant. Question time.   
"Who are you?"   
"Some guy," he replied simply. "I'm just lucky. Serious. Lucky, and kind." He didn't want them to know his name, nor that he was the latest Hero of Truth. Somehow he felt it would be distracting for both him and the group.   
"No, come on. How did you - why did you -"  
"I didn't go on purpose and I was only trying to live."   
"Huh. That makes sense, actually. Just trying to live instead of trying to win-"  
Black was moving again, and keeping his back to the group as he marched he mouthed the words _'blah blah blah blah blah,'_ caring less about the questioning. They all thought he was a hero, but-  
 _'Oh please don't tell me that's another ability. Please. I don't need that.'_   
-he really wasn't bothered either way. He wasn't trying to be dismissive, he only wanted to sit down, maybe eat something, and sleep. It was one of those obtuse situations that just tended to happen in life turned up to eleven.   
They must have picked up on his unwillingness to communicate and became silent again, following on after him and heading together towards the promising silhouette of Neos.  
  
Neos's outermost limits were not patrolled by day. By night, the police were out in force both to quell any Ferrum Battles that might disturb the peace and protect the public from the grubby hands of the people who had accepted Black from Ghetsis and 'drafted' all the others into their game. Crime was rife, but it was the type of crime that left few witnesses even with the enhanced security. People could be seduced away from safety in daylight as easily as they could under the moon's watch.   
It was in the afternoon light, however, that Black and the others made it into the city. It was a case of simply following the outskirt roads and in no time the sprawl of Neos was open to them. This was the opposite to the arid desert and ashen volcano. Ferrum had culture in the past, buried undersea and tucked away underground, ruins of ancient civilisations long forgotten. This was something else: Ferrum's future as a melting pot of technology, a centre of infrastructure and modernity compared to the region's otherwise historic feel.   
This was a tall and gleaming monument to society and the world it had created. Neos was Ferrum's tourist spot, the heart that kept the blood of Ferrum pumping - while Castelia had consumed the habitats upon which it was built, Neos intertwined with them. The Region's press always described it as a place where humans and Pokémon coexisted in perfect harmony, and this seemed to be absolutely true.   
Amongst the buildings were cultivated habitats where Pokémon resided. Black watched a Venipede cross the street alongside a group of schoolchildren that didn't even look at the bug twice, the afternoon beckoning the denizens of Ferrum through its streets. It seemed almost absurd that this was the same region where there were underground fight pits and cultures built on intense violence - this was utopian. Now his attention was piqued and his mind clearer. It was shocking to see after what he'd just dealt with.   
The Pokémon habitats were futuristic white platforms that rose as high as some buildings, with little alert signs informing the human populace to not tamper with or try to interfere with the biomes. "For information on tours of the biomes and capturing Pokémon, please call..." Black muttered under his breath, trailing off at the number. "Huh."  
As he had been speaking a Sewaddle and a Spewpa had emerged from the nearest habitat to him and were examining him with idle curiosity. Black waved to the two bug types and they chittered back.  
As he had raised his arm to wave he felt a powerful barb in his waist. The Garchomp let out a snorting cackle from beyond the grave, and Black had to resist spitting on the pavement to defile the creature's memory. He had sucked up the saliva, but swallowed it, trying to remain polite to avoid drawing any attention. The swallow became a gasp as he felt cold fingers run down his stomach, blood leaking from the slash again. One hand went to the opposite wrist automatically, expecting to feel something he could tighten there. Finding nothing made him more agitated than he may have expected.   
"Shit."  
By now he was alone, his dismissal of his companions having made them quietly give thanks and disperse in search of either a way home or somewhere to rest. He regretted being so short - maybe they could have helped him right now - but he had been so stressed, angry, confused, he had been thrust into this, he didn't want any of it. It wasn't an excuse, he told himself. They had just wanted to thank him and he'd coldly brushed him off. If he was going to be a public figure he'd need to work on his image, but he doubted that would be the case. He'd rather do this hero thing behind the scenes.  
A shiver of pure sensation passed through his body, a now-familiar thrill of danger and fear, but one he could master. His temperature spiked in seconds and he could feel a dizziness, but he was so accustomed to this series of strange feelings that he took these in stride and merely focused on what to do next.   
Next step: shopping list.   
After a little searching he found a corner store, and the moment the air conditioning hit him as he crossed the threshold he could feel the stab of familiar hurt again. It took all he had to not curse at its insistence. The sooner he closed it, the better: even if his planned methods were rudimentary.   
He had a very basic and ramshackle plan, and that was putting it in elegant terms. The plan was shit, but it would take him far enough. He drifted between aisles, ignoring colorful advertisements for wares intended for Trainers, Breeders or travelers. He was looking for simpler things: the less specialized the better.   
He collected items one by one. First was a stapler, placing it in a little grey plastic basket he'd picked up by the entrance. He only gave it a cursory glance to make sure it was indeed a stapler, not wanting to think about exactly what he'd use it for. He didn't want to psych himself out.   
In order to make the use of the stapler a little safer, he also bought hand sanitizer. That would at least go some way to making sure this solution didn't turn into a bigger problem, or so Black hoped. He wandered along, self-conscious of how obvious it must be that he wasn't local, forget the scrappy clothes and scruffy look. He was still in awe of how different this was.  
The store smelled different to a Unovan one, it looked different but only barely, only little things here and there - the layout, he considered as he moved in search of berries. At home they'd all be cluttered in a series of trays at waist height, but here they were kept refrigerated and were near the dairy products. It was alien, and as he scanned and searched he was certain his tired eyes and apparent confusion would make him look like he was on drugs.   
He couldn't remember which type he needed - was it Chesto or Pecha? He read the information on the pricing labels to try and remind himself. _'Chesto Berry - stimulating effects. Will wake a sleeping Pokémon.'_   
**_'Truth.'_**  
"What, you're doing it for writing too now?" Black questioned the voice under his breath. This would drive him mad, he was sure of it, especially considering he was getting no responses. He read the Pecha berry's label similarly.   
_'Pecha Berry - antidote effect. Will cure a poisoned Pokémon.'_  
 ** _'Truth.'_**  
"Thanks, but you don't need to tell me," he said, again his voice little more than a breath. He could feel a burst of both concern and anxiousness over this new form his lie detector had suddenly acquired. "You better not keep that shit up."   
He continued to stagger through the store, sifting through shelves and picking through various items in search of more equipment for his plan.   
Eventually he collected everything he was looking for, and quickly searched through the stolen wallets to make sure he had enough to buy it all: he was quickly reminded that he absolutely did. He knew the kind of people he was stealing from were well off.   
Black was rapidly losing focus. Fatigue was setting in. His mouth was hanging open and he had to keep reminding himself to close it to keep himself from looking totally gormless, and his eyes were weighed down by a force that he would believe was greater than Arceus itself if he was told so. Darkness would envelop his vision for seconds at a time and he'd take a moment before wondering why it was there, figuring his eyes were closed and snapping them back open again.   
Before he knew it he had stumbled and barely managed to catch himself. With a short look over his shoulder, he confirmed he was alone, and took a breath.   
"Keep me awake," he asked Reshiram. The dragon could not fulfil his request, but it felt good to ask.   
Making his gradual way over to the counter with the full basket, he met eyes with the checkout girl. He quickly averted his gaze, knowing he looked like shit, that he probably had grit in every line of his skin. As she rung up the items, he asked a simple question he often asked of those in the service industry, understanding the stress that came with it.  
"Alright?"   
"Yeah," she replied in a lighthearted tone.   
**_'Lie.'_**  
Black didn't continue the conversation. He looked back down at the items as she passed them through the red light, as the bleeps settled into a rhythm. Like his lie detector, it was steady, it repeated. He sighed. "You okay?" Black took a moment to return to the present before he answered the question, again resisting the powerful gravity acting on his eyelids alone, and thinking about Reshiram's metric of objectivity. What defined _'alright?'_  
"Yeah. Tired. It's been a long trip."  
"Oh, are you visiting?" She had very erratic movements, tapping buttons with fingertips, not elegantly but with a certain purposefulness and confidence that caught his attention. She was putting on an excellent facade of being fine if the lie was at all significant. He felt delirious. This didn't matter at all, why was he so concerned over it?  
"Yeah. Going home tomorrow," Black told her. That was the plan.   
"Where are you from?"   
"Unova."   
"Oh, some bad stuff going on there right now, yeah?"   
**_'Truth.'_**  
"Yeah. Not planning to get caught up in it." He mumbled the response in an attempt to steer from the topic, and stop the constant interruptions from the lie detector.   
"I hope things get better over there." There was a moment's hesitation. "Well, that'll be forty-seven Pokédollars, please."   
Black nodded. It seemed a reasonable price for his collection of odds and ends. He took out sixty, specifically picking two twenties and two tens, remembering the lie she'd told him about her day.   
"Keep the change, and the extra ten is a tip." He poked the note with his fingertip to underline the statement.  
"Oh - are you - you're sure?"   
"Yeah. Have a good day." Black had already lifted the plastic bag and was on his way out, trying to stop a smile reaching his face.   
"Oh - you too - thank you!"   
Black waited to leave, then let the smile happen. That might have been the first time he used his talent for anything at all, positive or negative. It felt good to use it, and not just have it speaking in his ear. Emerging back out into the afternoon streets he started toward his next destination - to get something different to wear. His shirt was sweaty and his trousers were shot with grey and black marks. Even without the gaping wound breathing blood visible to everyone else, the scar lining his face and the accumulated dirt must have made him look like a vagrant, if not just insane. He was surprised the cashier had actually served him.   
Black's perception of Ferrum was changing rapidly. There were two sides to it. Black mused over the number two. It was maybe the least complicated number. One meant the last or only of whatever it was, and three was a neat number but could not be split evenly. Two gave room for individuals. He wondered if these ridiculous philosophies were being whispered into his mind by some grandeur that came with being the Hero, or tiredness making him delirious again.   
Either way, Black was now finding Ferrum to be a little more like home than he may have thought it could ever be. This was like Castelia, fifty years into the future. Where the dirty grey air that the city propagated was now clear and where the black office buildings shared space with havens for Pokémon. Looking closer, Black could see that some of the blocks were interconnected by overhead walkways, linking together the living spaces of human and Pokémon.  
His Unovan pride was insulted by the incredible technology of the outback region, but the Trainer and kid in him lit up at the sight of the advancements. He'd have begged to visit years ago. He continued to gaze around in wonder as he patrolled the streets in search of a general store. The marvels kept him from feeling the pain of his cut a little while longer.  
There were giant dishes of water like pools but with large and impenetrable-looking glass walls around them. Any Pokémon inside were clearly not prisoners, however, given the streams and smaller pools that were open to the public that these large complexes divided into. The larger places were habitats, the offshoots where those habitats intertwined with humanity.   
After a little more scouting through Neos's towering and intimidating spires he saw some kind of small and humble clothing outlet - he had no need at all to spend exorbitantly on anything fancy. Something plain would be fine.   
Again he drifted like flotsam, a chugging cadence to his movement. Exhaustion remained locked into his body. He shifted about quickly, checking sizes on the simplest shirts and trousers he could find and picking up enough items for a fresh change of clothes. The new shirt was plain black to hide any blood that might soak into it if his cut opened again at any point.   
This time at the checkout he was quiet, rubbing his eyes and trying as best he could to surreptitiously hide his face. He was still self-conscious about looking a mess, but didn't see a reason for any place to refuse his money.   
The interaction was a lot more somber now that he wasn't in conversation. He could feel a certain frustration with this, that he didn't know the people around him, that he wouldn't find how honest they were. Paranoia made him second guess that feeling. Was he drunk on power already?  
"Sir?"  
Black came back into focus. He handed over the dollars requested, lifted the bag that the cashier offered, and nodded thanks before turning and departing.   
He had never felt this way. On the edge of death, on the edge of sleep, on the edge of breaking down and digesting everything, how he'd got here, how it had all gone so wrong, how it-  
Think. Stay in control.   
He had to find somewhere to rest. An inn. Anywhere would do. He didn't know the layout of the city, and his self-consciousness made him too afraid to ask anyone. Again he set off at a wander through the towering city, which was turning to dusk, neon blue illuminating the pillars of glass, brick, concrete around him. Neos had a second form just like Ferrum did - the violence and the harmony, Neos at day, Neos at night.   
His stupor dragged on and on, to the corner of a street, to the edge of a light, like a moth to the blue lights that pulled him to and fro until he figured that he had somehow found an inn. He knew by now he would remember none of this the next day. That he was running on fumes, less than that, on-  
He had a key in his hand and was saying thanks to the receptionist, assuming he'd had a full conversation that made sense and had booked a room properly. It seemed like a good assumption because the receptionist was smiling and nodding, but he wasn't actually-  
He checked the number on his key and read it as 224. He looked up and forgot what it was. Glanced back down. 224. Looked up. 224. 224. 224. He ascended two flights of stairs, much wider than staircases in Unova. He wondered why that was, then thought about Ferrum's harmony with Pokémon. Maybe it was wide enough to accommodate both people and various Pokémon species in parallel.   
He travelled down a blank corridor that was full of dim lights that invited him deeper into the back of his own head to drown in drowsiness. Patterns on the carpet that threatened to crack open and consume him. He pressed up against a door with the number two hundred and twenty four above it, that wasn't his room, his was two two four -  
He stumbled into room 224. Every part of him was being pulled apart on spiked spokes that rotated away from each other, shredding his muscle through.   
It was black and white, there were splashes of color here and there but for some reason those colors were prestigious. Black and white, an uneven split, more white than- more- he was pinching the material of the sheets, feeling it between his fingers, begging any god, Arceus, Yveltal, Giratina, Reshiram, for the ability to pass out on it.   
He couldn't just flop down onto the pristine bed and rest, though. The cut was starting to seriously buzz and irritate him, not because it just hurt but because it was becoming another distraction from thinking clearly. He shifted into the bathroom, switching on the lights and closing the toilet lid to sit down. He couldn't do this on the bed, too much mess.   
He tried to hit the light switch, missed and nearly fell over from his own momentum onto the floor - barely keeping his balance he reached up again to flick the light, only able to see the white switch in a sliver of light from the ajar bathroom door. He clicked it finally and caught sight of himself in the mirror. It wasn't as bad as it could be but he sure didn't look good: he had to decide based on the blurry outline he could make out.   
The first plastic bag rustled as he placed it beside him, and he sorted through the items inside, laying them out one by one. A stapler, hand sanitizer, instant noodles, a cheap phone, a few Pecha berries, a magnifying glass, a cigarette lighter and a length of string. The second bag, with his new clothes inside, went forgotten.   
These mismatched items all had a place in his list of things to do that started with closing up the cut. He took the hand sanitizer, stapler, magnifying glass and berries, sorting them in an order: respectively first, third, second and fourth.  
He pushed on the plunger of the hand sanitizer and put a median amount into the palm of his left hand before rubbing it against the right and between his fingers. This was the most he'd be able to do for now in terms of hygiene.   
His hands did not move with elegance or poise, only blunt and simple motions carried out to perform the act, nothing that could waste any energy. He took the magnifying glass next, holding it in one hand and the stapler in the other. The former was not really required but would help him operate the latter.   
Looking at the image through the glass he pinched the steadily leaking wound shut, placed the stapler against his skin, and gritted his teeth.   
**Ch-chk.**   
Black could remember a time he'd been in school and had stapled through a table, right into the wood. He'd spent the next half an hour trying to dig the thing out, and that was why he didn't understand Pythagoras Theorem. Triangles or something.   
**Ch-chk.**   
This time he didn't have a memory to distract him and had to watch the prongs dig into his skin and seal it up. He grimaced as the pain of the first set in, shortly before the second threw him off further. He could feel the individual strips of metal in his body holding it closed, and was only a quarter of the way down the gash. There was already a stressed heat building inside his face, the kind that started at the base of the spine and blossomed up through the arms and into the brain where it took root and created any combination of negative emotions. Here it constructed pain, fear and irrational anger from the kiln.   
He put in the next three quick -  
 **Ch-chk.**  
 **Ch-chk.**  
 **Ch-chk.**  
-and then stopped, his hands shaking and fingertips slick with his own wet crimson life. He leaned over, ignoring the scratching of the staples inside him, grabbed the string from where he'd thrown it down and wrapped it over his wrist in the same way his chains had been, trying to find that same focus. Small red stains from his fingertips appeared in the white length as he winded it.   
It wasn't tight enough or strong enough - Black pulled it tighter and tied it in place but it felt weak in comparison to what Ferrum had handed him by way of an introduction.   
It gave him a little bit more clarity in his actions, but not much. It was enough however to-  
 **Ch-chk.**  
-push down on the plastic casing-  
 **Ch-chk.**  
-a few more times, and inject more fine and precise pain into his skin.   
**Ch-chk.**   
Drenched in sweat, Black exhaled slowly, his face pale and his eyes wide. He could see it in the mirror across from him, and could also see the remainder of the cut left to seal. With a wrist he pushed damp hair out of his face and gently moved his arm back to staple more shut.   
He braced himself for the rest and his hand darted of its own accord. It pushed more metal home inside him, and he chose not to hear the clicking any longer. He muted it in his mind as he made the final three seals.   
Black had pulled his shirt down over his makeshift surgery before he remembered the last element - the Pecha berries. They should counteract any blood poisoning or bacteria that had entered him through the wound. Revealing the cut again he squeezed a berry over it and watched the sticky juice drip into the now-sealed fissure.   
He repeated this for about half the bunch until his torso was drenched in sticky beige juice, then started eating them instead. That wouldn't hurt either. They were very sweet, sickly sweet - he wasn't a big fan.   
Now he pulled the shirt over his head, removing it. It fell to the white tile floor with a muffled whump, and instantly became an accessory to the floor more than it had ever been a garment, like a filthy black towel.   
The trousers he'd been given were next, what with the pockets he'd accidentally shredded. They flapped in still air as he dropped them, and his eyes were drawn back to the mirror, his lanky and average physique. He was no stronger than anyone else as a result of his title, he was quite certain of that. It had all come down to what he'd already had, and what he already had was barely enough, barely enough agility, strength and wit.   
Not quite enough, considering the cobbled together operation he'd just done to himself. But he'd lived.   
Black stripped off all the way and stepped into the shower, before thinking about the potential of the staples rusting. He sighed. He'd figure that out if it happened.   
Standing under the hot water he knew better than to linger, both because of the potential rust he had been concerned about and his remaining energy.   
The sentences he put together in his head became increasingly short.  
He couldn't complete full thoughts anym  
Tilting his head back earned him a face full of warm water that briefly snapped him back to the moment and paranoia that he might collapse and drown or break something jabbed into his psyche - he immediately fiddled with the shower to turn it off, and his hands felt slippery, he felt like he was being crushed under a weight that was incredible in its persistence and power-  
He managed to get out and wrap a towel over his waist after less than thirty seconds washing-  
he was fading again, the water having only partly stirred him-  
he wasn't going to stay awake much longer-  
he took a spare towel and put it under his head, lay on the pristine tile floor and closed his eyes, feeling water run down his back and  
  



	4. The Lie / Unovan Written Exam / The Ideal Future

* * *

**Part One: The Lie**

* * *

 

"Hey."

"Hey," Hilda mimicked, hands in her black jacket pockets, stepping through the porch and into the front room with a familiar air. The pink soles of her trainers were splattered with mud and she stamped her feet halfheartedly on the welcome mat before taking them off and leading the way up to Black's room.

Black was silent. He wasn't sure about this.

Following her up the staircase into his room, he only passively watched as she slung off her bag and removed her black jacket. He always liked that jacket. The way she wore it. Hilda lay it over the back of his chair and took out some of her books from her bag. She turned to face him after throwing them down onto his computer desk.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"We're gonna need another chair."

"Oh, yeah." Black ran back down the stairs and grabbed one from the kitchen, his mom watching TV in the living room.

"Was that Hilda?"

"Yeah."

"Tell her I said hi."

"Sure."

Black took the steps quick with the kitchen chair held close to his chest. Hilda was already sat in the better chair, arms crossed, spinning around in the seat.

He froze again.

"You gonna sit down?"

"My mom says hi," Black said quickly before he forgot, then sat down next to her at his desk. He pulled his chair up closer and couldn't find words to begin with.

"So how do you wanna go about doing this?" Hilda asked, her usual nonchalance showing through. Black blinked.

"Well... I don't know. I don't know how best to do it." He pulled one of the books closer and started to read, and Hilda sighed and gently took it away.

"That's maths, we'll get to that when we get to that."

"Arceus," Black sighed, staring at the white textured ceiling, specifically in a spot that kept drawing his attention where the plaster was peeling away. "Hilda, I'm sorry I-"

"If you apologise constantly then we won't get any of this done. Now, you want to do this or what?" She tapped the pile of books insistently as she spoke, and the small action alone was intimidating.

"Okay, okay!"

Hilda swept a green book into the middle of the desk, and Black saw her name in neat block capitals inscribed on the front, with 'Unovan' written below. "This is the one we want."

Black nodded, and for a moment neither said anything.

"Fine, I'll open it then," Hilda hissed and flipped it open to the first page. Her annoyance quickly dissipated. "Okay. Okay, so, punctuation, right? Okay." She rubbed her chin with one hand while the other hand swept a finger along the page.

"I don't get the comma," Black interjected quickly.

"What do you mean you don't get it?" Hilda looked at him questioningly and the gaze alone made him wish he hadn't spoken.

"I- where does it go?"

"It goes to split up a sentence, like... like, I don't know... how about..." Hilda took out a pencil and wrote: _'A comma splits a sentence like this, a long and pointless statement, into many parts.'_

"Mhm," Black murmured. "Yeah, but- how long does the sentence really need to be?"

"It's a pause, to let the person reading think for a mo'."

"Oh." Black didn't really get it. "I get it."

Hilda glared. "Liar."

Black sighed. She could see right through him, better than Cheren or Bianca could.

"I can only help if you're honest," Hilda said, now gentler in tone. "Come on, man, I'm doing this for you."

He liked how she talked. It was relaxed. It flowed. It was easy to listen to and understand... when what she was speaking about made sense. The comma didn't make sense. "I know. I wish you didn't have to," Black admitted.

"What else am I gonna do all night?" Hilda asked him. "I'd rather be helping you."

"Thanks," he mumbled. He couldn't look at her. Black wasn't very good at Unovan, or maths, or science, or anything in particular. "I- I'm sorry, though."

"Don't be." Hilda brushed that comment off with less tact. "Sooner you stop apologising, sooner I can help you." She tore a page out of the back of her workbook. "Here." She scrawled quickly on the blank page a series of quick and darting words.

_'Your name is Black you live in Nuvema town and you wish that we didn't have to do this.'_

He was a slow reader. It took him a little longer than he'd be proud to admit.

"Yeah, don't rub it in."

"Okay, now put the commas in." Hilda spoke with patience and at the same time respect.

"Where?"

"You tell me," she replied quickly. "No pressure."

"Um..." his hand moved without purpose. It scratched two small lines.

_'Your name is Black, you live in Nuvema town and, you wish that we didn't have to do this.'_

"One's wrong." Hilda said, and Black groaned.

"This was a bad idea," he sighed. It was just making him upset, his inability to perform up to par. If he failed his Unovan exams there would be no way that he'd be qualified to go on a journey with the others. While Bianca's results were at least consistently average, his were always in flux.

"No. No, it wasn't. I'm glad you asked me to help. Believe it or not, you're my best friend and while you are stupid, you're... my stupid."

Black didn't know what to make of that. "Sure. Whatever you say." Despite how down the whole situation made him feel, he couldn't keep a smile away at Hilda's words. Yeah. He liked the way she spoke. "Let's keep going, then."

Somehow they kept at it for hours, just as the two had intended to. No distractions, just study and quiet chatter for a few hours. Black's mother came upstairs with hot chocolate and biscuits, and both teens gratefully accepted them. It seemed like a good time to wrap it all up for the night.

"Again tomorrow?" Black asked, his hands wrapped over the warm mug.

"Mm-hm," Hilda responded, her mouth full of biscuit. "Yeah. I've got plenty of spare time."

"Thanks, Hilda." Black wanted to say something more but couldn't find any words to express the feeling. He wanted the moment to last, for this peace to exist forever and never flicker out. He didn't want the looming threat of his exams to land on him and squeeze all joy out of his life for the weeks they lasted.

"No problem." She stood and put her jacket on, the one she wore so well. "See ya tomorrow," Hilda said, and Black stood beside her.

For a moment he was just standing awkwardly. Then he quickly hugged her. He let go just as fast. "Thanks."

Hilda laughed and hugged him this time. "Thanks for letting me help. And don't let this go out of your head." Her face became serious. "I mean it, man."

"I won't," he reassured, gesturing to the pages of notes he'd taken. "I'll memorise every word."

"And I'll hold you to it."

They descended the stairs together, and Black waited for Hilda to put her trainers on again and pull her bag over one shoulder before opening the door for her.

"See ya." There was a wry smile on his face as he bid her farewell.

"See ya later."

She left, out into the night, to head home. He watched for a second or two before closing the door, watched her throw her head back and flick her wild brown hair behind her and dip her hands in her pockets. She was already wearing a serious face, he could tell from her demeanour. Black shut the door quietly and went back up to his room.

"Commas... commas."

In moments all the warmth was gone from his room again. He was by himself. He looked over his notes quickly and gave a satisfied nod without truly reading them before swiping them aside irritably and moving across the room in one sweeping stride to look out of the window into the rainy nighttime.

One day he'd leave home. He'd go on a trip around Unova with Hilda and Cheren and Bianca. They'd have a great time, and he'd figure out what he wanted to do. He just had to pass this Arceus-damned test first.

He watched two raindrops descend the windowpane and raced them. They met and joined together. Black was disappointed.

 

“Which question did you pick, two-A or two-B?” Cheren questioned Hilda as they grabbed their bags off the floor of the gym corridor.

“B,” Hilda replied simply, putting her bag strap over her right shoulder so it settled against her left hip. “A was a joke.”

Black was taken aback. “I picked A,” he interjected.

“Me too!” Bianca said, her face worried. “Ooh, I hope I did well enough…”

“You did,” Hilda said, so noncommittally it was almost disingenuous.  “Don’t worry, I know.”

“What about me?” Black asked her, and she paused.

“You’re still on the fence.” She couldn’t keep a straight face, and once she had laughed, Black had to show an uneasy smile of his own. “You did great. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

The four of them walked along the corridor to their lockers, where they took out their gym class kits for the last time, to take home. The lighting that Black had always found just a little too bright was now just right. The glow, the look of the corridors around them, the muted blue and the grey stripe formed by notice boards and the locker stacks felt like home. It had been for five years.

He knew he wasn’t the only one having those thoughts. Cheren was quiet as ever, but so was Bianca. Hilda, though, muttered to herself as usual. She was always moving. Black would rather stay still.

Cheren caught his eye and both boys exchanged a look. The information exchanged was even more encrypted than most that could be shared via expressions. They had had an entire conversation about Hilda through their eyes and faces, Black’s brown eyes and Cheren’s blue. The faintest smiles were visible on the features of both of their faces for a second.

The exit was packed with students all filtering out in a bubbling and stuttering crowd. The four squeezed their way through, Hilda first – she had the pointiest elbows, and those made good tools for establishing a presence in the crowd and making some space. The other three followed along until they made it out of the pack.

“My place?” Hilda asked them. Black and Cheren were both looking back at the building, Accumula Town Middle School. Hilda tutted.

“What?” Black asked her, not sure what she meant for a moment.

“Are we partying tonight? Now that we got it all out of the way?”

“Of course,” Cheren said simply. He was right. There was no reason for them not to. It had balanced out Black’s pre-test anxiety to know that when all was said and done, they’d be sleeping over at Hilda’s house playing video games and eating junk food.

“Yeah,” Black confirmed, now he knew what she was talking about. “Believe me, it’s all I’ve wanted for the last three weeks, for all this stress to be done with.”

“Well… it’s done. Cheer up,” Hilda advised.

“Already feeling better,” Black replied, and the four followed the path out of the school gates, past the bike sheds and the buses into the town. Unova was the largest region, and they’d spent all their lives in a tiny corner of it. There was so much more to see. So much more than the path that cut through route one so that non-Trainers weren’t bothered by wild Pokémon on their way between Accumula and Nuvema. So much more than each tree lining the route, and the lake that led away into route seventeen.

He wasn’t feeling better at all. All this dwarfed him. What place did he have in a world so massive? As usual, he shook the thoughts out of his head. Take the days as they came. Learn. Grow. Don’t change anything for anyone.

He worried too much.

He could see a Jigglypuff staring at him as the group passed by, crouching in a vain attempt to conceal itself. It probably wanted food. Black’s eyes met the Pokémon’s and it quickly scarpered away. It must have decided taking on four humans at once for snacks wasn’t a good idea.

Bianca and Hilda were talking about the questions again, and Black decided to join in.

“What about two-A was a joke?”

“It spelled out the structure of the answer for you. It basically gave you bullet points on how to build the response.” Hilda waved a hand dismissively and Black’s heart sunk. He didn’t get how exactly the question had done that – it had taken five minutes to even understand it.

Cheren pushed his glasses up his nose. “I wouldn’t worry if you didn’t see it, Black.” Black wasn’t even slightly surprised that Cheren knew about his concern. “It was a light framework, so long as you talked about the changes in the characters between the acts you’ll at least get a pass.”

Black’s heart rose again, back to its comfy original spot. He had at least done that.

“Next time we come up here we’re going to be Trainers!” Bianca’s sudden exclamation caught them all off-guard. “Oh, I can’t wait, how long is it now?”

“We’ve got to get our results back first,” Cheren said, gently tugging her back down to earth.

“Oh. Oh, yes.” She looked sheepish for only a second before defaulting to a smile that seemed to never truly vanish. “But we all passed! Hilda said so – and you, Cheren, didn’t disagree, so she’s right!”

“Yes, I wouldn’t disagree with someone who’s right…” Cheren muttered, and everyone but Bianca heard him. Black and Hilda both huffed with stifled laughs. This was the way things were. The four of them, no divide, no conflict, the way Black liked it.

 

Controllers clicked and clacked. Black was sat beside Hilda at her desk, which was covered in party food – Cheren sat cross-legged and straight-backed, while beside him Bianca was on her knees, twisting the controller from side to side.

“Tilting the controller doesn’t help,” Hilda said through a mouthful of pizza.

“B-But it’s a Wii!”

“Yeah, and that’s not a Wiimote.”

“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, _Hilda,”_ Bianca huffed, her voice laced with frustration that everyone knew would blow over the moment the game ended.

“I’ll talk then,” Black spoke up. “You can’t tilt the controller.”

Bianca was still holding it sideways. “Oh- Oh no!” An exaggerated explosion echoed from the TV speakers and a flash of light illuminated the dark room, Hilda having turned her lights way down.

Black took a sip of lemonade. “Did you win?” he asked dryly.

“I lost. Again.” Bianca sighed and swept her favourite green beret off the floor, adjusting it on top of her head before standing. “Black, it’s your turn.” They swapped, so Bianca was sat at the makeshift buffet and Black was sat on the light pink carpet beside Cheren. He sat with his knees up, his elbows atop them and the controller held just in front.

The two chose their characters and the symphony of clicking joysticks resumed. Black was better than Bianca at the game, but not as good as Hilda or Cheren – not to say he couldn’t beat them. He just had to have a game plan.

“Hey, you guys know what Pokémon you want to catch? Any of ‘em,” Hilda spoke again, and they could hear her chewing.

“Victini,” Cheren said quickly, focused on the game. He and Black were at a standoff, dashing back and forth.

“That’s cheating!” Bianca cried. Black quickly paused the game and turned to her, wondering what unspoken rule he or Cheren had broken.

“What is?”

“Catching Victini!”

“Oh.” Black unpaused the game and he was immediately carried across the stage by Cheren, taking heaps of damage in the process. “Damn it,” he muttered as he lost his first life.

“Because, if you catch Victini, then- then you can just catch every Pokémon!” Bianca said. She didn’t really have an ‘indoor’ voice, and Black chose to blame that for why he had respawned and was already at a disadvantage.

“Yes, exactly,” Cheren said, continuing to apply pressure. Black found his way out of the predicament and reversed the situation, taking Cheren’s first life in return. “Nice.”

“Thanks.”

“How about you, Black?”

He thought. He liked bug types, electric types and steel types. He didn’t know of every Pokémon in Unova, but he knew a few, enough to make a short list. “Emolga, Durant… Tynamo… A Larvesta, if they exist…”

“What’s a Durant?” Bianca was already looking it up on Hilda’s laptop – Hilda’s protests were muffled by more pizza. “Oh- ew! Ew!”

“What’s wrong with it?” Black questioned and pushed hard – he and Cheren clashed and both took swings that missed. Cheren followed up faster and put Black in another bad position.

“It’s gross!”

“Rude,” Hilda cut in. “It looks cool, I want one.”

“Hmph…” Bianca sighed, deflating. “What else do you want to catch, Hilda? _AH_ -ah ah- Don’t talk with your mouth full!”

Controller clicks filled the silence. Hilda swallowed and swigged her cola before answering. “Litwick, Purrloin, Deino and if I can find one, a Zorua.” She rattled off the names easy as reading bullet points. Her choices didn’t surprise Black or Cheren at all.

“Huh? That’s a lot of dark types!”

“Yesh,” Hilda said.  “Nuthin’ wrong with that!”

“Well, no, but- I didn’t expect-“

“So many dark types?” Hilda was speaking more clearly again. “I like ‘em. How about you?”

“Well- I like psychic types,“ Bianca stated. “Oh no! They’re weak against dark types, right Cheren?”

Black charged in that moment and the two exchanged blows, exaggerated whacks of meaty close combat heard from the TV. “Yes, they are,” Cheren confirmed for Bianca over the noise.         Black now came out on top, claiming Cheren’s next life. Not that it mattered much – Cheren often made sure to close any gap fast and efficiently.

“Well… I guess I’ll capture something that’s good against dark types then!”

“Yes, that’s kind of the point of building a strong team, Bianca,” Cheren pointed out – Black held him at bay for long enough to get some damage off before he lost his next life in turn. “And in case you’re wondering, bug and fighting types are strong against dark types.”

“Fairy too,” Hilda added.

“Fairy too,” Cheren repeated to confirm.

Now that they’d all shared, the conversation guttered. The girls watched the boys play, watched as Black’s lead was stolen and he was beaten by Cheren’s quick surgical strikes and overwhelming capitalisation. He switched with Hilda, sitting beside Bianca. There was a spot, a tiny little ball buried in him spaced perfectly between his heart and his crotch that was full of fear. What if he didn’t pass? He’d be stuck here at home with his mom until he found a boring job and would have to have a boring life. It wasn’t fair that it all got judged on a test. Why couldn’t people come up with something else? Why couldn’t people look at character instead of intelligence and reading comprehension and-

Bianca yawned very loudly and Black almost immediately yawned too. He checked the time in the corner of Hilda’s laptop and saw it was nearly midnight.

He’d been scared of today for weeks, but he’d known what was coming. Now he was more scared of the day after. What would happen tomorrow was up in the air. He didn’t want today to end.

But he was still getting tired.

The videogames lasted them until the early hours, and after a while with aching eyes and tired smiles they had turned their attention to sleep – Hilda and Bianca in Hilda’s bed while Cheren and Black slept on an inflatable bed beside them. They talked well into the night, what they knew about Unova, what they knew about Pokémon, what they knew about anything and everything. Cheren was the most verbose.

Eventually Hilda sat up and switched the light off. The chatter continued for a short time longer, then all was quiet.

The four slept well.


	5. Monochrome I

It had been a simpler time.

That was certainly how Black was meant to feel about it, but when he looked back on the school years they absolutely weren’t. Given his slowness and – well, his stupidity, he’d admit it – things had always been… complicated. 

Yes, they’d probably be a lot more complicated if he hadn’t ever signed up to go on that journey. He’d have to worry about ‘further education’ and ‘part-time’ and ‘P45’ and ‘financial stability’, and thankfully all he had to worry about instead was ‘what if the magical creature on the next route turns me inside out and eats my eyeballs?’ That really wasn’t so difficult.

He felt like he knew nothing. He pretty much did know nothing.

And today was already the day.

They’d be picking up their results and if they passed everything they had to, they’d be allowed to set off on Professor Juniper’s Pokémon studying initiative. It was one of a great many occurring around Unova and beyond, a push to catalogue all the Pokémon the world over with no error or contradiction due to the number of kids that would be hired to adventure. Black understood the advantage of a large sample size.

The dark side none of them chose to acknowledge was that the things they’d be investigating were stronger than them, faster than them, and perhaps would not take too kindly to an attempt to capture them. Not all of them would make it through the journey.

Black would. He knew he would. They were travelling in a group. Hilda was the fighter and the brains along with Cheren, Bianca was the spirit and he was… an extra. He was just there, but that was okay. He would be glad to have the opportunity. He recapped it all in his head as he trekked up to school again to pick up his results. The others would be waiting for him.

He thought about how practical Hilda was sometimes. She had known there was no sense in getting nostalgic and had tutted at him and Cheren looking back at the place because they’d be back to pick up their results. She seemed to just know things. They clicked for her. Cheren had the book learning, she had the instinct, Bianca had the spirit and again he didn’t know where he fit in.

It had been raining again. The pavements through Accumula town were dark with damp and the sky was overcast with grey solid as graphite. Neither were good portents for his future. The sun most certainly was not shining on him today. He continued anyway, knowing it would be impossible to put it off. If he failed then he failed, and then he’d have to do all that ‘further education’ stuff. Sickness was building inside him and making him squirm with an unhealthy paranoia.

Before it could get the better of him he’d put it away to deal with later, once he knew what he’d got. All that study couldn’t be for nothing.

 

The four stood in a group. Hilda was across from Black, Cheren was across from Bianca.

“I wanna open each other’s envelopes,” Hilda declared and Black quickly shook his head.

“Arceus, no. You only wanna switch ‘cause you aren’t worried about yours.”

“I’m with Black!” Bianca agreed quickly, almost too quickly. Black was glad she’d come to his support, and he could see that she was shaking with nervousness.

“Hey,” he said to her, in his slow, calm voice. It tended to calm all the others down. “You’ll be fine.”

“I- Thanks…” Bianca bowed her head. It was her way of communicating embarrassment or nervousness, and both may have been the case. “You will too.”

“Together?” Cheren asked.

“Together,” Hilda confirmed, quickly giving up on the idea of switching envelopes on seeing how stressed Black and Bianca were over it all. “Ready?”

Hilda and Cheren both had the dexterity to slide their thumbs under the seals and slice them clean in one stroke. Bianca took two tries. Black got stuck a third of the way and tried again, with force – the envelope tore, but not the documents. Knowing his failure was already being preceded, heat rushed to Black’s face. He tore the flap off one small rip at a time, choosing to take it slow over launching back into it with too much force. It worked then.

“Ready now?” Hilda asked dryly, having watched the spectacle of Black consistently failing to open his envelope. Black stuck his tongue out at her and made a _‘nyuh’_ sound. “I guess so.”

They took out their sheets of paper and read through.

Hilda finished first and her expression remained neutral. She’d got exactly what she expected, then.

Cheren didn’t smile either.

Bianca squealed, very loudly.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa-“ Hilda stuttered, trying to escape as Bianca threw her arms around her suddenly. “Hey – hey, chill out, what-“ She looked at Black, and his eyes briefly met hers and he saw the genuine concern she had for him and his results before she made her joke. “Cheren, Black, either of you got a crowbar?”

“Nope,” Cheren told her and sidled over to Black – Black felt Cheren lay his hand on his shoulder. It was unusual for Cheren to make contact. Black wondered if Hilda and Cheren had planned to cheer him up if he failed, make it seem not so bad. “How’d you do?”

“This can’t be right.” Black noticed Hilda break free of Bianca’s patented Iron Hug at his words.

“Why not?”

“I got all A’s.”

“No, that’s the grade boundaries,” Cheren pointed. “Those are your grades.” Black followed Cheren’s indication and read it properly. For a moment he had been willing to believe he’d aced everything, but he was dragged back to reality.

“Oh.” Black didn’t speak further on reading.

“How is it?” Hilda asked. “Did you do it?”

Black swung his arm out against Cheren’s chest – the motion was fast but he didn’t touch his friend, only held out his results for Cheren to take. Cheren only managed to barely get his fingers around the paper before Black let go and closed the gap between himself and Hilda in one stride.

“Yes.”

Hilda jumped at him and he caught her in a hug before realising he wasn’t strong enough to hold her up and tried to put her down only for Bianca in turn to grab him by the waist and try to lift him too in excitement, squeezing him too tightly. He felt the air vanish from his lungs as she crushed them, and gasped. “Cheren- help-“

“Bianca-“ Cheren tried to stop her but it was too late to intervene. She was laughing too loudly to hear him, so Cheren instead decided to get involved more directly by providing more support to the base of the hug pillar before they all tipped over. After seven more seconds of the four of them being locked together Bianca finally let go, allowing all of them to disperse.

“Phew,” Black said, and he and Hilda nodded to Cheren. Bianca was oblivious. “But yeah. I did it.”

“Good,” Hilda was trying to hide a smile. “If you hadn’t after all that work I put in I would’ve beat the crap outta you.”

“You’d have tried,” Black taunted back.

“Shut up and let’s hug again.”

Now they all piled in properly.

“Let’s hope they’ve got enough Pokémon for all of us, huh?” Hilda laughed.

The group left together, and this time Hilda looked back at what was now their old school with them. The moment didn’t last. It didn’t have to. Onto the next great adventure.

 

The days just built and built. It seemed there was never a lull, as Black always found things escalating. Studying for tests, doing tests, getting results, and now what those results had enabled him to do, the journey, the adventure.

Black was beginning to grow paranoid with anticipation. Everything that might go wrong. There was everything that inevitably _would,_ but they’d learn from and have laughs over. Was he the only one who had such thoughts? Was he thinking too hard over everything he did and making of something small something enormous?

Yes. He was aware. He didn’t have to worry.

He didn’t.

Time reached its zenith, its peak. A spike of monumental change.

A morning, a dawn where a light rain cascaded. It was hardly a touch on his hair as he moved down Nuvema town’s paths. The sun was not visible behind ashy clouds. Foreboding creeped up from his spine into his shoulders and the base of his neck. He shivered as he came to Hilda’s house and knocked lightly with his knuckles – her mother opened the door for him.

“Hey! Hilda and Cheren are waiting for you upstairs! Quick-quick! You don’t want to miss out on shotgunning one of those Pokémon for yourself before you’ve got no choice, huh?”

It was easy to tell where Hilda got some of her relaxed and yet at the same time energetic sayings. “They wouldn’t start without us. I need a lot more patience than a lot of other people,” Black reassured her, and she smirked at him.

“So she says. But I think she likes it. Now get up there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Black said with a false salute and a forced smile – forced because he was concerned now over Hilda liking his slowness. He tossed the information aside to focus on the now and ruminate over that implication later.

Black took the familiar stairs up to Hilda’s room and saw Hilda kneeling on her chair, hands impatiently clasped together, while Cheren was sat on her bed looking far more composed at a glance. It only took a few moments to notice his messier-than-usual hair.

“Hey.”

“Black,” Cheren greeted.

Hilda didn’t say a word. She almost looked angry until she let out a loud and drawn-out _‘Uuuuuughhhhhh.’_

“Yeah,” Black said as if she had said something deeply profound. “I agree.”

“Same here,” Cheren chipped in, his voice dry.

“Guys, shut up, you’re stressing me out.” Hilda’s voice was deep with annoyance.

“How?”

“Black, sit down.”

“Where?”

“Don’t care.”

Black sat where he had been standing.

“Not there.”

Black raised a finger.

“Fine, there.”

Black noticed an unusual object on Hilda’s desk – a blue box with a green ribbon. “Is that-“

“Yeah.” Hilda said. She was sat with her back to the box, resisting the temptation to open it and know what was inside. Black could imagine how it was putting her on edge. “Yeah, that’s them.”

“Do you know-“

“No.”

“Are there enough?”

“Yes.”

“When’s Bianca-“

Hilda looked at her crosstransceiver idly. “Six minutes ago. You were here five minutes ago.”

“I wasn’t-“

“You were _meant_ to be.”

“Oh.” Black said nothing more. “So we’re waiting?”

“We are.”

They did.

“Arceus!” Hilda shouted after about forty more seconds. She swung both her arms up and launched out of the chair. “Come on, Bianca, don’t be late today, don’t be twenty minutes late today, just-“ She snapped her fingers constantly while pacing back and forth. “Appear. Appear. Appear.”

“Hilda,” Cheren tried.

“Appear.”

“Hilda.”

“Appear.”

Black sighed deeply. “For fuck’s sake, now you’re stressing me.”

“Right, I’m going to her house.” Hilda announced her plan as she slung on her black jacket, the same one she’d worn when she’d gone to his house to help with his studies. “I’m going to drag her out of bed then drag her here then drag her across Unova, I don’t give a shit.”

“Sounds great, but for Arceus’s sake knock first.”

“That’s the plan.” Hilda stormed out with such presence that she seemed to leave crackling ozone in her wake, charging the room. They heard scattered words of a short discussion between Hilda and her mom before the former left – Black couldn’t believe that her mom had let her chase Bianca to her house.

“Do you know which ones are in the box?” Black asked Cheren. He had a suspicion that may be the case.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Do you?” Cheren asked.

“No.” Black stood now and sat next to him on the bed. “Arceus… you’d think Bianca… forget it.”

“You don’t think something’s wrong, do you?” Cheren asked Black. He considered the question.

“Maybe… I don’t know. I don’t think Hilda going over was such a good idea.”

“How were we gonna stop her, though? She does as she pleases.” Cheren was gesturing as usual even though they were both staring at the wall opposite, hardly acknowledging their physical presences aside one another, as though they were in a phone call. Black dug his hands into Hilda’s duvet and sighed.

“Do you wanna look at ‘em?”

“I want to. But we shouldn’t.” Cheren’s response was simplistic and very fair.

“Yeah.” Black agreed. “You wanna ask Dialga to… y’know, speed things up?”

“I don’t think it’d listen.”

“Fuck.”

“Mhm.” Cheren paused. “Do you feel kind of… ill?”

“Good, I’m not the only one.” Black tried to laugh and couldn’t. It came out as more of a cough. “Do you reckon they’ll be good types?”

“They’ll probably be a fair type-square.” Black understood that concept – that types would beat each other but be beaten back in a fair circuit, allowing each new Trainer to both learn to synergise with other types and know advantage and disadvantage matchups. “Fire, water, grass, electric, something like that.”

“Cool.”

“I hope we get some of the more esoteric types, though.”

“Eso… what?”

“Weird types. Like fairy, dark, steel, fighting.”

“Oh yeah. Cool. How about, like, bug, dark, fighting, fairy?”

“They all beat dark,” Cheren pointed out.

“Yeah, but, like- ah, yeah. Nevermind. Arceus, I hope Bianca’s okay.”

The door audibly clicked downstairs. They heard Bianca and Hilda’s voices for a moment, then a scuffle of movement, then quick footsteps coming up the stairs. Hilda made it up first and she had an expression like thunder for a few seconds before she quickly reset it. Black noticed. Cheren hadn’t. Hilda swept her jacket right back off again. “Okay, fi-“

“I’m sorry!” Bianca wailed as she entered the room and Hilda’s face twitched a little.

“Bianca,” Cheren started, but Hilda held up a hand.

“Not her fault,” she said.

“B-but… Sorry, Black, sorry, Cheren.” Black and Cheren both nodded in acknowledgement, but Black dismissed her concern.

“Whatever. We’re all here now.”

“Sooooo…” Bianca began, already cheering up on seeing the box. “Where are the Pokémon?” She said it too sweetly.

“You know,” Hilda called her out.

“I do,” Bianca confirmed with a big smile.

“Then-“ Hilda dashed over to the box and in moments Cheren, Black and Bianca had blinked to her side. She lifted the letter attached to the ribbon and read off it.

 _I’ve brought four Pok_ _émon, one for you and one for each of your friends. Please settle your choices politely. Enjoy your Pokémon! - Professor Juniper_

Hilda put the letter aside, whipped off the ribbon with a thumb and index finger and took a breath before removing the lid. There were four basic Poké Balls inside.

“Um…” Bianca spoke up. “Hilda should get first pick, cause it’s her house.”

 “Naturally,” Cheren agreed.

“How do we know what’s inside?” Black asked.

“Here,” Hilda said and tapped a button inside the central ring of a ball she had picked up. A red projection emerged from the centre of the ball, indicating the occupant. A Tepig. Pokédex number zero zero four, fire type.

“Oooh!” Bianca squealed in delight. “It’s happening!” She bounced up and down on the spot.

“Yeah,” Hilda said, trying to calm down herself. “Chill, chill, I’m…” She put the ball down and lifted another – the other three had the same idea at the same time and picked the remaining three up. “Hey, wait-“

“We just wanna see what’s in them!”

“Okay, fine-“ Hilda said and they all activated the projections at the same time. Black found himself looking at the others before the one in his hand. The holograms displayed zero zero one, Snivy, grass type, zero zero four, Tepig – the one they’d seen – zero zero seven, Oshawott, water type and one zero one, Joltik, electric and bug type.  

“Oh, Arceus, okay,” Hilda stuttered and giggled giddily with excitement. “Okay… hold on…” She looked across each projection one by one and clapped her hands. “Um… hey, Black?”

“Mhm?” Black murmured. He was holding Snivy’s ball.

“Toss me that one?”

Black obliged, throwing it straight and fast and Hilda caught it with an almost inhuman reflex in her free hand. “Here,” she said. She threw the ball she had been holding, going high so Black had plenty of time to intercept it. He caught it but nearly fumbled. It was the ball for Joltik. He turned the ball over and rubbed the red part of the curve with his thumb.

“Snivy. Zero zero one.” Hilda thought. “Number one. The only one for me.” She held it up. “This one.”

“Well, that was fast,” Cheren commented. “Who’s next?”

“Ooh! Me, me me me me-“

“Okay, okay-“

Bianca made a face at the projection of the Joltik much as she had at the Durant Black had mentioned wanting. Black had had no idea what a Joltik was – he’d never heard of one before. Its typing was of great interest to him however. He was already feeling a little attached. She looked down at the ball in her hand, Oshawott. “I want this one!” She had decided even faster than Hilda.

It was left to Black and Cheren, Tepig and Joltik.

“Black?”

“Yeah?”

“Pass?”

He threw the ball high, mimicking Hilda’s earlier throw. Cheren caught it in a similar fashion. He looked between Tepig and Joltik, then set them down on the desk and raised a contemplative finger to his chin. “What do you think?”

“Me?” Black asked. He didn’t want to be honest and just say _‘I want the Joltik,’_ and he didn’t want to be misleading and say _‘The Tepig looks more powerful.’_ He thought. “You pick whichever you want. I don’t mind which I get.”

“You liked the electric and bug types,” Cheren pointed out. “I’ll be fair.”

Black smiled and caught Joltik’s ball as it was tossed back to him. “Thanks.”

The four looked between each other, then down to the red and white capsules in their hands. They thought about the creatures inside, and unrest built up in all of them.

“Everyone’s got a Pokémon now!” Bianca announced, bouncing up and down on her heels. “So... that’s that!” She continued with a meeker tone. “Hey… I know… why don’t we have a Pokémon battle?”

“Honestly, Bianca,” Cheren began, and it was clear one of his lectures was fast approaching. “Even if they’re still weak Pokémon, you shouldn’t have Pokémon battles inside a house.”

Bianca huffed. “Come on, Cheren, don’t be a worrywart-“ Black and Hilda looked at each other over the word ‘worrywart’, then back to the conversation, “-These little ones are weak, like you said. We have to let them battle so they’ll get stronger!”

“I don’t think that-“ Hilda tried to say and Bianca quickly turned to face her, disregarding her protest.

“Okay, its decided!” Bianca announced. “Hilda, you’ll be my opponent in my first Pokémon battle!” Bianca pressed the release button and tossed the ball down, where it deployed Bianca’s new partner, Oshawott, into the room with them. “Ooooh!” Bianca exclaimed with joy. “Hiya! I’m your new Trainer!” She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, observing the water type closely.

“And I’m the Trainer who’s gonna beat her,” Hilda fired back with a harsh tone but a playful grin. She pushed down on the release and opened the ball manually instead of throwing it. Her Snivy appeared in a flash of light by her feet. “Hey, Snivy,” she greeted the Pokémon and the grass snake blinked up at her with curiosity. “I’m your trainer, Hilda.”

Neither Trainer was sure of the next step. Bianca made a guess.

“Oshawott, go! Use- use a move!?”

The Pokémon looked at her, confused. It glanced over its shoulder at Hilda’s Snivy and blinked.

“Attack!” Bianca shrieked with more of a jovial tone than a combative one. Oshawott understood now and removed the signature scalchop weapon from its stomach to wield in battle. Bianca yelped in excitement. “Go, go, go, go, go!”

Oshawott leapt at Snivy and Hilda tried to think of a command. Her mouth moved just about as fast as her brain. “Block!”

Vines protruded from the shoulders of the grass type and ensnared Oshawott’s arm. The face of every human in the room fell as Oshawott recoiled, trying to pull away. Snivy lifted up the water type – the whole Pokémon was raised over its head. Oshawott flailed.

Snivy slammed its opponent into the ground, then lifted Oshawott again as it wailed desperately, pulling back.

“Stop! Stop, stop!” Hilda gripped Snivy’s waist and pulled it into her arms, making it drop Oshawott. “Bad Snivy-“

“Oshawott!” Bianca exclaimed and rushed to her Pokémon in turn, lifting it up and patting its head as it shrieked. “It’s okay, I’m not a- a bad Trainer, I promise-“

Cheren adjusted his glasses. “I think we need to get to know our Pokémon a little better before we start to battle. We don’t know their strengths yet, and it would be best that we don’t get them hurt before we go to see Juniper.”

“Well why didn’t you say that _earlier!_ ” Bianca hissed the sentence as though Cheren had suggested the battle. “Poor Oshawott – I – What if Juniper thinks I’m a bad Trainer?”

“Bianca. She won’t. She will not, okay? We shouldn’t have battled them anyway-“

“But it was my idea-“

“Doesn’t matter,” Hilda interrupted her before she could go on. She withdrew Snivy to its ball and put it aside, hugging Bianca tight to reassure her. Hilda was not one to hesitate when it came to comforting others. “Oshawott will be okay, and Snivy…” Hilda for a moment turned sour again, “Well, I’ll have it apologise.”

Bianca held Oshawott tightly, continuing to pat its round head in an attempt to make the beating it had received recede. “Oh, I- I’m sorry-“

“What have you got to be sorry for? It’s fine, Bianca, we’ll back you up.” Black patted her shoulder in time with her pats on Oshawott’s head.

“O-Okay…” Bianca sniffled, and Black thought for a second.

“Maybe we should just let them all out and get used to each other, huh?” His suggestion would hopefully cheer Bianca up some to see all their new Pokémon.

“Yes, letting them get to know each other and us – without battling - seems reasonable,” Cheren commented. He activated the release mechanism and his Tepig emerged from the ball, snorting small and harmless spouts of flickering flame from its snout.

“Alright.” Black fumbled with his ball until he could release his Joltik. The flash happened, but for a moment he couldn’t see his Pokémon at all. “Where’s-”

“Ooh! It’s so tiny!” Bianca had sat down and was pointing at Hilda’s rug – Black scanned the floor and saw a miniscule yellow insect no larger than his thumb near one corner. “Ooh!”

Black quickly moved over to Joltik and scooped it into his hand. It chittered and ran down from one side of his hand to the other, sticking to it as it moved. “You’re not scared, are you?” Black asked his starter, and it continued to blithely run laps of his hand. “Not confused?”

Cheren was crouched beside his Tepig and was scratching between its ears. “It’s probably getting used to you.”

Joltik kept on doing circuits of Black’s fingers. “I don’t know what it’s up to.” He held up his other hand to Joltik and it clambered over and onto the offered limb. Black shrugged. “Seems fine enough.”

The bug continued to do pointless loops and indeed Black forgot that it was even there for a moment as he looked down at Cheren introducing himself to his Tepig. “Hilda, let your Snivy back out. Me and Black will handle it if it gets out of hand,” Cheren said, noticing Hilda hadn’t let her grass type back out yet.

“Fine,” Hilda said and the last starter Pokémon to join the group emerged from its ball. Oshawott flinched, but Bianca held it tight. In response it hugged her back, already warming to her protectiveness over it.

The four new Trainers sat in a square and showed off their Pokémon to each other. Snivy, Oshawott, Tepig, Joltik. Hilda, Bianca, Cheren, Black. It was the start of something.

Times would get more complicated.


End file.
